The Blacksmith's Tale
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: In every great tale, there are parts left untold. This is the tale of Thorin O. and Co, by his fiery apprentice Hela the Fire Hammer, born of a Berseker Dwarf father and a Tookish witch mother. Can anything alter the doom that fate ordained for the Heirs of Durin? Who knows? With a Daughter of Loki on their side, even the fates may be cheated out of their prize. NO SLASH.
1. The Trickster's Gift

**THE BLACKSMITH'S TALE**

**_Full Summary:_**

**_Meet Hela Took, daughter of Fenrir the Berserk. For twenty-four years, she lived a solitary life with her Dwarf father and her Tookish mother, on a little homestead nestled in the Hills of Evendim. But for the red-haired child of their old age, a gift from the God of Fire and Mischief, Fenrir and Oleander dream great things. When Thorin Oakenshield, a master blacksmith, agrees to take Hela as his apprentice it seems their dreams will come true. But, ten years on, Hela, now a blacksmith and a Dwarven berserker in her own right, has returned to the family homestead, nursing a grudge against her Master and King. When she hears of his Quest for Erabor, she will take it up as her own. But, can anything alter the doom that fate ordained for the Heirs of Durin? Who knows? With Hela the Fire Hammer, daughter of Fenrir, blessed of Loki on their side, even the fates may be cheated out of their prize_**.

**Prelude: Fire in the Forge**

In those days, 60 years before the War of the Ring, the Shire could boast of having a real Dwarven Master Blacksmith, who had been apprenticed for ten years to Thorin Oakenshield, himself.

It seemed somewhat odd, to Hobbits, who were more traditional about a woman's place than Dwarves that their smith should be a woman, but Hela was half a Dwarf, and half a Took, to boot, so they gave her a chance.

She proved to be more than up to the task.

It was a fine day in Hobbiton, but almost every day, fine or not, you could hear the sound of Hela Took's hammer ringing in her smithy; she worked as hard as any man would have, perhaps harder

Nor were the Shirefolk too surprised to see the Master Blacksmith's nephew in Hobbiton; he visited with Hela quite often.

But, when Kili, the nephew of Thorin entered the smithy, he, like everyone else who did, almost wilted from the blast of heat that came from the forge, as the flames leapt almost as high as the ceiling.

Thorin Oakernshield was a Master Blacksmith, and Kili's brother, Fili was Thorin's other apprentice, so he was used to the heat of a smith's forge, but even Thorin said he had never known another smith, of any race, to work at the temperature Hela did.

Except, maybe her father, Fenrir the Berserk.

Kili unbuckled his belt and took off his surcoat, hanging it on a peg.

It disturbed Kili that Hela went about her work dressed only in her boots, kilt and drawers, wearing nothing else but her blacksmith's apron, but it was the way she had always worked, and her father before her, and Thorin, too, worked in only his boots and breeches.

Kili had argued with Hela that they were both men, but Hela did not see what in her back was different from a man's, and she was covered enough in front that she was wholly decent.

Not seeing what in her was different from a man was sometimes the source of Hela's problems.

"Is that you, Kili?"

"It is, Hela. Your braid's coming all loose. Let me fix it for you."

Kili walked over to her, putting his hand in the small of her back, and kissing her cheek in greeting.

Her long red-orange hair was coming loose from all directions of the sloppy braid she had made it in.

"Aren't you afraid your hair will catch fire?" he asked.

He got his comb from his pocket and combed out Hela's hair, then he braided it tightly, all the way down to the small of her back, and fixed it in place with a mithril clip with a turquoise stone inlaid in it.

His Uncle had made that for her.

"It's never caught fire before. But now it's contained I won't sweat so much. I'll only be another five minutes or so, I've only got one horseshoe left."

Kili sat on the bench that Hela had in case her customers wanted to wait.

A few minutes later, Hela had the horsehoe she was making in it's place to cool, and she sat beside Kili, threw her arms around his neck and gave him a proper kiss, to say hello.

"Hela, the door is wide open!"

"And? Are we rolling around on the floor?"

"Kiss me like that, again, and we will be."

Kili went and closed the door.

"Well?" Hela asked.

"This time he is going! He has got a map from Gandalf the Grey, who is going with us, and Thorin has put out a call to any able-bodied Dwarf over the age of 30 to join his Company. Men only, though. There's been no small amount of grumbling in the Blue Mountains among the warrior women, over that."

"He's only made that rule so I won't go!"

"But you're coming, anyway, aren't you, Hela?"

Kili had his arms around her, again, running his hands up and down her bare, sweaty back.

"By every hair on Thor's brass bollocks, and all the fire in Mahal's forge you can bet I am! I just don't know how, yet."

"We can be married, here, in the Shire. By your people's laws, I'm of age to marry. And Thorin can't tell me not to bring my wife along."

"Yes he can! No, I'll have to figure a way so that he can't possibly go without me. When do you depart?"

"In two months time. I should be home, now, with Uncle Thorin and my brother, getting ready to leave. But he thinks you're not coming, so he didn't mind when I said I was going to come to see you."

"He thinks! If that wily old bastard of a whoremaster thinks he can do me out of my chance at whopping great sacks of dragon treasure and a chance to prove myself worthy to be a Berserker, then he's got another fookin' think coming! Get your surcoat, Kili." Hela seethed.

"Now?"

"Well, you could leave it here, no one will steal it. Yes, now, because if we are not soon in my rooms at the Green Dragon you will be on the floor. It's been too long since I saw you, last."

"Did you miss me?"

"I just told you I did."

"Do you love me, Hela? Only a little?"

Hela took off her apron, and took a black tunic off a peg, and put that on and tied the laces at the front.

"I'm not putting my jerkin on and lacing it up, just so I can take it off again."

She threw it over her shoulder.

Kili was waiting for an answer.

"Kili, I've been your girl, and your friend, for twenty years. I'm going to marry you. I just can't love you. Or anyone else, for that matter. Why do you keep making me say it?"

"Because when you say you can't love me, you mean you can't admit it to yourself that you do. Now if you said that you didn't love me, then I'd be in trouble."

"Kili, I would never say that."

They began walking across the street to the Green Dragon.

* * *

**Chapter One: The Trickster's Gift**

There are those that say that a marriage between a Hobbit and Dwarf is always a mistake.

Like my mother and father.

She is a Hobbit; he is a Dwarf.

And there are those that say that Fenrir the Berserk never should have married, especially after he became a bit demented following the Battle of Azanulbizar.

Something my mother and father also agree upon.

But, one of the only other things that Oleander Took and her husband, Fenrir the Berserk do agree upon is that there is one good thing that came from their marriage.

And that is me, their daughter, Hela.

My father was about a hundred and forty when I was born, and my mother was sixty, which, even for a Dwarf and a Hobbit, is middle-aged and beyond childbearing years.

They prayed to all the Valar and the Aesir to be blessed with a child, after the first twenty years of their turbulent marriage, and then they appealed to Loki, God of Fire and Mischief, the Trickster, for whose son, Fenrir the Wolf, my father is named.

And who is also my mother's special patron, considering she is a Tookish witch.

That is why my name is Hela, that is the name of Loki's daughter, the Queen of the Underworld.

Their proof that I was a blessing, sent to them by the god my grandfather honored in naming all of his sons after Loki's?

I am getting to that.

My mother, Oleander Took, who is a practitioner of the psychic and healing arts, teaches school in the Shire.

We live on a homestead at the bottom of a hill, just to the west of Buckland, iin the Hills of Evendim.

There's a Hobbit hole, a barn, and a smithy, with a fence around the whole of it, to mark the lines of my father's property.

If you're coming from the Blue Mountains, then you're not too far once you cross the River Lune, just up the hill and down again, and there we'll be.

If you're coming from the Shire, then you're only a short journey, we are just west of Buckland.

And if you stand on the top of the hill into which my father built my mother her hobbit hole, you can see the Blue Mountains to the West and the Shire to the East.

On a clear day, you can even see Breeland in the distance.

My mother has taught school in the Shire for as long as I can remember, but since I was about 20, she has been staying in the Shire, rather than travelling every day for two or three hours to get to our homestead. She and my father get along a lot better since they only spend the summertime and holidays living together.

And most weekends.

She's a very grand and well–educated lady, even for a Took, so don't ask me why she married a half-mad Dwarf berserker, who was known as a jolly fellow, but one with a horrible temper even before the event that we do not even mention in his presence.

Mum is about four feet tall, and renowned, even at her age, for her great and oddly-undiminished beauty; if she was not a witch, people would accuse her of being one for that, alone.

She had black, curly hair, and very dark eyes that look black as a shark's when she is imperious or angry.

She could have married any Hobbit she chose, and probably any number of Dwarves, maybe even a man of Breeland, or so she tells me, but for reasons neither of them can fathom, she picked Da.

I think it was because he was the roughest, toughest, biggest, baddest blue-eyed son of an Orc's warg she could find.

Da?

Well, he's a Dwarf.

Dwarves, in general, don't think much of Hobbits.

Unless they are Tooks.

Dwarves have long memories, and there are a great deal of them still alive who recall fighting side by side with my great-grandfather Bullroarer Took, and his kin, against the goblin hordes.

Da was among them.

You name the battle since the coming of Smaug, and Da was in it.

He bit the wurm's tail in a Berserker rage, and swears that one of his teeth is yet imbedded in Smaug's tail.

He's about five foot two or three, tall for a Dwarf, and his body, particularly his massive shoulders and his equally massive chest, look as if they were cut from a slab of granite.

He can carry an anvil under either arm, casually, without breaking a sweat, and I once saw him casually pick up a man six feet tall with one hand, by his throat, and throw him through a window for accusing Mum of being a "Tookish Hedge witch".

Still, he claims when he was a young man, he was twice as strong.

He has a very bushy brown beard that likes to stick out of the three braids he keeps it in, and thick, bushy, curly brown hair that stands out all around his head like a lion's mane no matter what he tries to do with it.

It's shot through with grey, but not as much as you would think, for a man his age.

And in the middle of all this hair are his very keen and very wolfish blue eyes.

Neither of them actually are as awful as they sound when I describe them; they are both just a little eccentric, but then again, so am I.

As for me, I think I look like my father, but I've been told I'm nearly as pretty as my mother, but whereas she's very tiny and petite I'm built like Da, is, except you won't go mistaking me for a man.

If you like your women tall and willowy, you won't like me, because the only thing bigger than my arse and my hips are my tits, and my shoulders are as big as my hips are.

I can lift an anvil, easily, but I have to use both hands, and the biggest man I ever picked up and threw was about five foot six, but I once picked up two Dwarrows who were grown men, one in each hand and knocked their heads together and tossed them in opposite directions.

I am somewhere in the area of five feet tall, give or take an inch, and I think my face has a sort of impish, puckish, quality, despite having my father's Dwarven nose.

I also have his wolfish blue eyes.

But my hair is neither brown nor black, it is the color of fire.

It is not just red, but many hues of red, orange and gold, like a leaping flame.

Like Loki's.

My parents took that as a sign that I was a miracle, a gift of the gods, intended for Great Deeds.

We shall see about that, as I, myself, am not too sure.

Being half a Hobbit, I have very furry feet and very little beard, only a little downy goatee that I make into a tiny little braid that is only the thickness of a pencil and about as long as my longest finger.

Which has only just grown in.

And I have rather small hands, especially for a blacksmith, although it has never impeded me.

I am not as heavily tattooed as my father, but I have some Dwarrow knot tattoos on my biceps and my forearms, and calves, and on one side of each eye, my Berserker tattoos.

In his retirement from war, my father is a blacksmith; he is happiest, I think, when he is in his smithy.

I was his assistant until I was in my teens, but then he decided that I should learn his trade, so now we are both blacksmiths.

He did not teach me, himself, rather, in accepted Dwarf fashion he apprenticed me to a Master Blacksmith, for ten years.

Da had the good luck to have grown up with Thorin Oakenshield, himself; indeed, until his retirement, they were as close as Thorin is to his kin.

They caught up with each other in Bree, when I was about 14 or 15, and when I was 20, I found myself apprenticed to the King Under the Mounatin.

I did, however, get to spend Yuletide and the summer with my family, but I was otherwise abroad with my Master, learning my trade.

Ten years before the mast, we lived sometimes in luxury in the Blue Mountains or in some far-flung foreign court, but a good bit of it was in the wagon, on the road, or at some inn, ten years of hard work and hard labor, through thick and thin, in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, winter and summer, there you could find me at Thorin's side, until the end of my apprenticeship did us part.

It is not uncommon for Dwarf women to take up a trade, especially when their fathers have no sons, and I am my parents only child.

As such, my father expects me to carry on the family tradition, and so although I had never been in in anything but a fistfight, before leaving home, he taught me, himself how to use a bow and arrow and an axe, his weapons of choice.

We drill on most days.

A responsibility my Master did not ignore.

My mother would rather I took up a gentler profession, like finding a husband, having some grandchildren and writing Tookish histories, as she professes that she will once she retires, but she is a Took, after all, and as long as she gets the son in law and the grandchildren, she doesn't mind if they come with a little bit of war, aforethought.

She has made sure I have had a lot of culture and learning, and I have spent a lot of happy hours under one of our big trees with a nice fat book.

Mum likes to remind people that I can speak, read, and write Khuzdul and Sindarin, as well as Westron, and that I have produced some written works of my own.

She tried to teach me to play the harpsichord, but I was never very good at it; the fiddle and the Pan pipes are my instruments, and Mum considers them crude, although she doesn't think it's so crude when I can pick up a little extra cash playing for people's parties, in the Shire.

In my parents' minds I might be Hela the Great, but they both suffer from just the smallest bit of megalomania, and a few minor delusions of grandeur.

The only problem is, I do, too.

Despite my humble origins, it has always been my desire to make Hela Took, the Fire Hammer, daughter of Fenrir the Berserk, a name known far and wide, from the Blue Mountains to the White Tower of Gondor and back again.

That is a desire I have mollified, lately, because sometimes my megalomania overtakes what is happening right in front of me, but still, I would not be choosy as to how I made my reputation, whether as a scholar, a blacksmith, or a great Berserker warrior.

Alas, despite having the marvelously ominous Berserker name "Fire-Hammer", I have not seen much of battle.

I have fought orcs in skirmishes, but not in any great battles, but, these days, the only war, though that I am likely to have is in Bree, where my father makes an appearance , once every three months, to stay for about a week, do some work for the local slope-necked yokels, and sell some of his wares.

I have quite a tradition to live up to, because my father, Fenrir the Berserk, is the brother of Vili and Vi, the Terrible Twins. Their father was Slepnir the Skull-Crusher, who was the son of Jormungrandr the Fearless.

All of them were Berserker warriors of great reknown, and all master smiths.

And all but my father died at the Battle of Azanulbizar.

After that, Da had quite a bit of trouble with his nerves.

We lived so far away from town because, after the Battle of Azanulbizar, ,he found that most things upset him to the point where he went berserk. But as long as we were in the cottage, or at the smithy, or even in the nearest town, or the parts of the Shire, where people knew him and he knew them, he was alright.

Now Da, he'll go to the Shire, to visit with Mum, and me, and go to the Green Dragon, but everyone knows its only a matter of time before he goes berserk.

It doesn't bother most Hobbits, anymore, crazy old Fenrir has been around for 55 or 60 years, and most of the time he's in a good humor and is rather a jolly Dwarf, and when he does go berserk, he foams at the mouth and shouts, and roars, but he destroys only things, not Hobbits.

But Da gets embarrassed and upset about it, though, not being able control his berserker rage, anymore, and then he goes home, and you can't get him to leave again for weeks, even months, sometimes.

But, as my mother reminds me almost constantly, you had to keep an eye on him, just to make sure.

Because he'd kill an Elf on sight, and if a man said a word the wrong way to him, he'd make him wish he hadn't.

When Mum is home, she does go on about how she wished she could live in the Shire with the rest of her Took relatives, and how three months when school was not in session was plenty of time to live with my crazy father in exile like and he ought to try harder and so on and so forth.

Well, I've been living in the Shire, three seasons out of the year for about five years, and I think Da would like to, but he just isn't very good with people.

Mind you, like most Dwarves, he has a love of gold; money makes him and my mother feel ever so much better and nicer, and Mum and I both think that if Da had just a little treasure of his own, one chest, even, he would settled down enough that he could live with people again.

Which would be good for Da, because he gets lonely.

That's what I keep hearing about.

Them needing a little something, for their old age.

That's the other great love Mum and Da have in common.

Money.

I'm not saying that I'm not fond of money, myself, especially since we've never had as much of it as say, Mum's cousin Bilbo.

But I wouldn't sell me down the mines for the sake of a few sacks of treasure, and they've gone out of their way to.

What I mean is, the only good thing about Mum and Da is that they are almost completely self-absorbed in their own crazy, so they hardly notice mine, considering how closely related it is to theirs.

And me, well, I'm their little investment.

Even if they can't get a return on me, yet, they can get a lot of work out of me.

They expect me home for the summer and for Yuletide and when I am, they get a whole year's worth of work out of me.

But, over the last winter I came up with a plan, a mad plan, a crazy, mad plan that any sane parents would veto in a moment if their son mentioned it to them, let alone their daughter.

Thank the God of Mischief whose children my father and all his close kin were named for, and Mahal who made my forefathers out of stubborn stone that both my parents were mad and greedy enough to think it was a wonderful idea.

In truth then, I suppose I would sell myself down the mines for a shot at a few whopping great sacks of treasure, not to mention that if this madman's quest is successful, then my name will go down in history.

If it is not, my companions and I will quite literally go out in a blaze of glory.

So I will pick up the story at the point where spring comes, and Oleander Took and Fenrir the Berserk bid their only daughter a fond farewell, for she, at 35, is now two years past the coming of age of her mother's people.

In case you were wondering about the years I spent serving under Master Thorin, yes, I will come to that, but I thought I'd begin with what you know, and then, once I had your curiosity, go back for what you didn't.

For I was determined to volunteer for the Company led by Fenrir's King-In-Exile, Thorin Oakenshield, both for the greater glory of the family, a proud dynasty of Berserker Dwarves, and in the hopes that I will get Mum and Da a cosy place to spend their old age in Erebor, where Fenrir spent his youth, or at least a few whopping great sacks of dragon treasure such that they can both retire to that lovely little place in Long Cleeve that they both have their eyes on.

Perhaps both.

We are a small family, after all, and if we do not look to feather our own nest, then no one is like to do it for us, are they?

But, Mum and Da are not the only ones with plans for Smaug's stolen treasure.

With most of the money I cobbled together in my ten years before the mast, I bought myself a nice piece of land in Hobbiton.

Right now, all that sits on it is my smithy; I live in two rooms with a bath down the hallway at the Green Dragon.

But I should like to build a barn and a Hobbit-hole of my own, with all that lovely treasure.

There was only one problem with my big plan.

Thorin specifically called only for Dwarrow men to answer his summons.

Probably to avoid me.

Well, two can play at that game.

Thorin was smart enough not to tell Kili exactly which day his Compnay would come to the Shire,but he did not recall that Gandalf the Grey is an old friend to all Tooks, and moreso to a Daughter of Loki, like my mother.

Gandalf told me the day and the time when he expected that the Company should begin to arrive.

That day, I hung a sign outside my smithy.

"Welcome fellow Dwarrows! All Swords and Axes sharpened free, to-day only. Edging of broken or chipped blades and Ponies shod half-price. By Master Blacksmith Hela Took."

Every Dwarf who came to answer Thorin's call came to my smithy.

They all knew me, every man among them, and I hadn't seen any of them but Kili and Fili in five years.

In particular I was glad to see Gloin and Oin, who I am closely related to; their mother and my father's mother were sisters.

Oin made a point of telling me as to how he had stopped to see his cousin Fenrir, and that they had discussed it amongst themselves, and as he was the oldest of my closest male relatives who would be present, at this dinner that he would make a point of taking up my grievance with Thorin, publicly.

Inddeed, at one point in the evening, I had them all there but Balin, Dwalin and Thorin.

I had so much work to do, I had to get Fili, to help me.

One and all every man Dwarf of them said they couldn't figure as to why Thorin was making an attempt to exclude me, and no man said he would regret having me along.

When I had done all their work I was commissioned to do, I sent them all on their way to Bag End.

It was dark, while I was cleaning up and preparing to close up shop, but I found that I had one last customer.

"You must have had a lot of work today, Hela, my girl, hanging a sign like that outside your shop. But I haven't come to make more for you."

"Oin means to call you out on the carpet, for breaking the promises you've made to me. He and Gloin and my father, they've had a nice long talk about it. So, the game is up with you, Master Thorin. You're up to your arse in warg shite." I told him

I had not seen hide nor hair of Thorin Oakenshield in five years, having not so much as a letter from him, and this was his first visit to my smithy.

I had a good idea of what Thorin had come for, and I wasn't having any of it.

"I have not broken any promises to you, girl. I have just not fulfilled them yet. Five years is not such a long time."

Well, that didn't half get my ginger temper up!

I picked up my hammer, and brandished it at Thorin.

I didn't intend to hit him with it, but if I did, well, he's got a hard head.

"Maybe not for you, old man! It was a Hel of a long time for me! Mind you, if you've come to tell me I'm not going with you, then you can roll all the way to Hell with your head up your arse, for I'm goin on this quest, by Thor's big brass bollocks, and I don't care what you have to say about it!"

Of course, Thorin thought it was funny.

"By your brass bollocks almost as big as his, girl! After five years, you greet me not with tears, but with your usual filthy fishwife mouth and sharp tongue, waving your hammer at me as if you're about to split my skull in two! I am glad of it. I would have been disappointed in you, apprentice, if the years had made you weaker and not stronger. I came here to ask you to honor your vows you made to me fifteen years ago, and join my Company. Not to tell you to pack up and go home."

That knocked me for a loop.

"No tricks, you old whoremaster? You haven't collected a small fee from the members of the Company who are not your close kin so that they can have a go with me, after we've been on the road without any women, for a time? Or am I only expected to service the immediate family. You and Dwalin, and Fili and Kili?"

Thorin drew himself up into the greatest height of his kingly majesty, to protest most mightily.

"You would not mind that last suggestion, so much, would you, girl? But I must protest—"

"Before you protest too much, Thorin, remember that winter in Rohan, when we were down to pocket change and our last wagon wheel, and you informed me that if we wanted to live, you'd have to peddle my arse, and judging from the way I looked at the blond burly giants of Rohan, I wouldn't suffer too much for it?"

"I did not follow through with it, though, did I?"

"No. But only because I refused."

"Refuse? You went Berserk on me! I'm lucky to have survived! And of course I am not taking you along for a whore for the company, for my close kin or any other Dwarf!"

"Just for yourself, then, Master Thorin? Let them all go chastely to their deaths, but if the King Under the Bed When the Husband Gets Home is to go to his date with dragon fire, then he'll face death without a drop of spunk left in his ten gallon bollocks, because he has brought along his red-headed whore? You can go service yourself, for I wouldn't have you if you had the last cock in all the Dwarf kingdoms of Middle Earth!"

Oho, now we get down to business, for Thorin's blue eyes blazed with anger and indignation, and in his greatest height of kingly majesty he grabbed my hammer out of my hand and threw it aside like it was made of straw, grabbed me by the arm that held it and hauled my body right up close to his.

By the Gods, was I ready to eat those words I had just said!

"You have sworn vows to me that bind us more securely than marriage would! You belong to me, Hela, my girl, body and soul, and if I want you, I will have you, and you will be as glad of it now as you have ever been!"

His terrible frown melted into, at least for me, and even more terrible smile.

"I think you have grown an inch or two, these past five years. You may even have cracked five feet, my girl. And you have even gained and inch or two on top. Still wearing those tunics laced at the front, but I'll bet you've had to loosen that jerkin a little, to make more room."

And you can just guess where Thorin had the hand that wasn't on my arse, while he was admiring my full development into womanhood.

Well, I won't deny that I had been glad of it, in the past.

Nor will I tell you that it was an unpleasant thing, having my master caress my bosom and my backside.

And it would be a filthy lie if I was to say that Thorin in all his anger and his majesty wasn't more than enough to make me sorely want to go knees up and pull him down to the stone floor of the smithy to make good on his threats.

But I have my pride, don't I?

And also my rage.

And, close at hand, my dagger.

I summoned up all the force of my will, shoved him away, and pulled my dagger out of the sheath at my belt.

"Try it."

"What? You threaten me with weapons? What do you want me to do, girl? Take you right here, with my boots still on? You are lucky that I am already late, or I would! Finish closing your shop and make your final preparations to leave. This Baggins fellow is your kinsman, is he not? I'll be waiting for you, outside, and you can show me the way to go. And don't tempt me any further, or I'll drag you from your pony and we'll do it on the side of the road!"

I put my dagger away, having counted myself the winner of that round.

"How did you ever get food and supplies, that winter in Rohan, anyway?" I asked Thorin, as he stalked to the door.

"The women of Rohan were very kind to me, a poor traveling blacksmith, in my time of need during such a brutal winter." Thorin replied.

And he winked.

I thought about what he'd said, while we were on our way to Bagshot Row.

"Why is it that when a man lies with a woman one night and she fills his wagon with goods the next day, that only means he's one hell of a man, and she's giving him gifts for it, but when a woman lies with a man and he gives her money or gifts the next day, she's a whore?"

"Because women don't have to pay a man to lie with them. If they aren't grossly fat or incredibly ugly, all they have to do is ask. If they want to be doubly generous with him, if he's up against it, that's gracious of them. Men, on the other hand, are desperately stupid about fookin', and they'll pay the fattest, ugliest woman in the world in gold coins to lie with them, if she's the only woman around. Even the most handsome man, with the most perfect manners, who had the stamina of a bull and was hung like a donkey could never make a living depending on the graciousness of women, but any woman can make a living depending on the stupidity of a man with a full purse and a stiff cock."

"And you have explained this to Fili?" I replied.

"I never should have told him that I haven't paid a landlady in gold for a hundred years! He took it to heart!"

"Well, Fili can't help it that women love him, can he? And why shouldn't they? He's blond and blue eyed and handsome, and he's a prince. Not to mention, witty, charming, funny and good-natured. Why I've never met a Dwarf with such a good nature as Fili! I've known him for twenty years, and I' don't see how any woman of any race could resist him. Or why she would want to?"

Well, that got Thorin going.

"Durin's beard, girl, you haven't lain with Fili, too have you?"

I smiled, enigmatically.

"That's for me to know, Thorin, and for you to think about!"

By the time we got to Bag End, in Hobbiton, I could hardly find a place to hitch my pony up.

Thorin took the spot closest to the door, left just for him, of course, and it was twenty minutes of it was one before I went to the round green door of Bag End, and knocked.

Bilbo Baggins answered.

"Hela Took, the Fire-Hammer, daughter of Fenrir the Berserk. At your service." I said.

"At my what, Hela? Oh, yes, that's right, you are a Dwarf, too. Does my cousin Oleander know that you are going to be a party to this…adventure? Because I will send you straight home if she doesn't! I have no desire to make Oleander mad, whether she is a, well, a daughter of Loki, or not."

Cousin Bilbo was trying to find a nice way to say either witch or sorceress, neither of which are particularly nice things to call your cousin.

Even if they are true.

"She wasn't too glad to hear it, but Da convinced her. I mean they both do want me to make my own way in the world. "

"I know what Oleander wants. She wants your suitor to get enough money together so you two can marry, and she can have some grandchildren."

"She does. And at the rate I'm going, I won't have enough money to build a Hobbit hole of my own until I'm her age. I could use a windfall, too."

"Well, at least you're family, Hela. So you had better come in. I'll find a place for you. Alright, fellows, make room. We have another guest, my cousin is here."

I walked over to the table and every Dwarf at it stood up.

After all there are not a great deal of Dwarf women, so Dwarf men go out of their way to be respectful of them.

I decided to go out of my way to be respectful, as well.

"What have you been doing out there, Hela, my girl? Come and have your dinner, before there's nothing left. Fili, Kili, make some room for Hela, and get another chair!" Thorin ordered

I wish you could have seen the look on his face when I went to my Master, at the head of the table, removed my bow from my back and my axe from my belt, laid them on the floor at his feet, and knelt on one knee before him.

I lowered my hood and bowed my head.

"Hela Took, the Fire Hammer, daughter of Fenrir the Berserk, at your service, Master Thorin."

I raised only my eyes, and they met with Thorin Oakenshield's.

The haughty mask of kingly control that my Master commonly wears slipped a bit, when he saw his apprentice kneeling before him, and for a moment he was just another dirty old man, having a moment of naughty nostalgia.

It was a brief moment, but it lasted long enough for every eye in the room to see it.

That was good enough for me.

Still, Master Thorin recovered his magisterial air quite quickly.

"You cannot be late when I have brought you to this place, myself, my Apprentice." He solemnly pronounced.

"Master Thorin, I have tidings from my father to his king. Fenrir the Berserk regrets that he can't come on this quest, as something as little as being bitten by a mosquito makes him go berserk, and he's still in the habit of killing Elves. On sight. He has sent me, in his stead. To satisfy the honor of our family. For my own part, I come to you because you are my Master, and I am bound to you by my honor, as a Dwarf and a blacksmith, and by the vows I have made to you, not to mention the ten years I spent proving to you that these were not just words to me. I accept the honor you have offered me, to take up this quest at your side, to die at your side, in your service, if that is my fate."

And the whole time I spoke, I remained on one knee, my eyes on Bilbo's spotless floor.

I had him over a barrel, there, I did.

"So, it's only your honor, and your vows. You're not interested in a share of the treasure, then?"

"Of course I am. Every Dwarf in this room is interested in the treasure. But that doesn't make it any less a matter of my honor. In fact, I have less of a stake than you do, Master. I intend to take my share and come back here, marry my fiancé, and get on with my life. You can have the whole mountain and everything in it. I only want what's mine, by rights."

"You do have a debt of honor to Hela, Uncle." Fili pointed out.

"This coming from a man with a mistress and three children, but no wife!"

"I may not have married Marigold, but all my children know their father well, and they know that he has provided for them. My honor is satisfied." Fili replied.

"Oho, so you're _that_ Fili! You know one of my sisters is Marigold Brandybuck's mother. Ivy and Holly and Fili, they are my little nieces and nephew! Well, that makes me feel a bit better about having you and your kin and your Uncle's people in my house, I'm sure." Bilbo interrupted.

"Cousin Bilbo, my knees are getting tired."

"Well, get up off the floor, Hela."

"Yes, girl, get up from the floor! I hardly recognize my apprentice, kneeling at my feet! Don't you think you're layin' it on a bit thick?"

I elicited a sarcastic laugh from the King in Exile.

By now I was only sitting on the floor at his feet, not kneeling.

"Is this the daughter of Fenrir the Berserk, who, while foaming at the mouth, took a bite out of the worm Smaug on his way fleeing from Erebor? Who killed a hundred orcs if he killed one with his bare hands after his axe and sword were broken at the Battle of Azanulbizar? And I don't have all night to recount your own berserker deeds. Well, Hela, you'll be far more useful than your Hobbit cousin. Now, get up off the floor, girl. I know you better than that! As if you were a humble little lady who never gave her Master a minute of trouble in 10 years. You wouldn't want to start what might be your final journey with a whopper of a fookin' lie, like that!"

I got off the floor.

"As you wish, Master Thorin."'

"Nonetheless, Thorin, while Fili has raised the subject, Gloin and I met with our cousin, Fenrir, on our way here, and we all recall you having made certain promises to our Hela. Promises that you have not kept." Oin interjected.

"Promises I have not kept, yet, Oin. Promises I had always intended to keep, but only upon the fulfillment of this quest."

"I think Oin is trying to say that you might have made your intent a bit clearer, Thorin. Your apprentice has had some trouble, these past five years, considering she did not know quite how to represent the nature of your promises to our people." Balin tactfully interjected.

"And Kili has seen to it that those problems were resolved. Now, that's settled, we can move on to the question of our burglar." Thorin replied.

"Wait a moment, Thorin. I think I ought to have a say, in the matter." Gandalf interrupted.

He looked at me.

"How old are you, Hela Took, the Fire Hammer?" he asked me.

I had just sat down, in the space Fili and Kili made between them.

"But Gandalf, you know that. You put on the fireworks at my 33rd birthday party!"

"Just answer the question, and, none of your Tookish lip!"

"I am thirty and five." I answered.

"I see. And how old were you when your father apprenticed you to Thorin Oakenshield to learn blacksmithing?"

"Twenty."

I suddenly realized what Gandalf was trying to do.

Apply a little guilt, and set a fire under Thorin's feet.

"I went straight from my father's homestead, in the Hills of Evendim, to Thorin's Halls." I added.

Dori looked into his plate, shaking his head, and Oin said something to Gloin that made him nod, sadly.

Bifur turned to Bofur and spoke, too.

"No, I had no idea Hela was that young! Why she's still more'n a little wet behind the ears! Don't you think, Thorin, you ought to've left the baby in the cradle a bit longer, then?" Bofur chuckled.

Gandalf gave Thorin a dirty look, and shook his head.

"Twenty? And you were his apprentice for ten years?"

"Yes, sir. I spent the summers and Yuletide with my family, but the rest of those ten years I served _**under**_ Master Thorin."

Bofur laughed so hard that beer shot out of his nose.

Gandalf gave Thorin an even dirtier look.

"I see. well, on one hand, I see no reason to turn the young lady away. If she is of age by the reckoning of her mother's people, then let her begin to make her name, in the wide world. On the other, Thorin, do you think it wise to take a young unmarried girl on a journey with so many men? None of whom are, at the very least, her fiancé, let alone her husband?" He asked.

"Now see, here, Gandalf, I think that's a rude thing to say! I mean, what kind of fellows are these? If they are those sort, then I will stay in Hobbiton, and so will you, Hela!" Bilbo protested.

"I just want to know if she is spoken for, Bilbo. This is the kind of thing that spoils a woman's reputation, and Hela is the Shire's only Master Blacksmith."

Kili stood up.

"Hela has a fiancé. Me. We are all but married. I would have married her, already, but I am not yet of age. We have had our braiding ceremony, before Dain, son of Nain, King of the Iron Hills, and our promise to marry each other is binding under Dwarven law, as binding as marriage, and like marriage, and cannot be severed, without just cause. I speak for her." He said.

Thorin stood up, too.

"Gandalf, you do us a great disservice in front of our burglar, to make him think that once we are on the Great East Road we will all be chasing his kinswoman around our campfire! These are Dwarrows of honor, they are the kind of fellows who respect their king enough not to dishonor his apprentice!" he protested.

"Oh, is that what they're calling it now, Thorin? That's as much as you're going to get out of him, Hela, until his boots are consumed with dragon fire and his pants are catching!" Bofur interjected.

He got a very big laugh.

"Wait a minute, now, Master Gandalf. She may not be known to you, but all of us here know Hela. My brother and I, and Thorin, himself, and Gloin and Oin and Nori and Dori, indeed all the company, we all know Fenrir, and his four late brothers. Fenrir is kin to Oin and Gloin. And Hela is of Durin's folk, promised to Kili, nephew of Thorin. We are Dwarves of honor. We will not behave like animals!" Balin huffed.

"We won't. Thorin might." Nori interjected.

"He always has been, in the past." I commented, under my breath.

"Come down to this end of the table, Nori, and say that, again!" Thorin threatened.

"And you tell me, , that disrespect is no way to convince a Dwarf woman to be your wife? Well I've got two wives. One in New Belegost and one in the Iron Hills, and while that might not be strictly fookin' legal, when I've promised a woman marriage I've followed through with it!" Nori defended himself.

"Not to mention disrespecting a Dwarven lady is a very good way to get a battle-axe through your head." Bofur interjected.

"I wasn't going to put an axe through his head. Just my fist." I said.

"Nonetheless, as Kili himself has pointed out, he is not of age. Will you, Thorin Oakenshield, be personally responsible for the young lady? Do you speak for her?" Gandalf demanded.

"I am the Chieftain of this Company. She was my Apprentice, I swore to Fenrir fifteen years ago that I would teach the girl our trade, and take reponsibility for her. I swore vows to her, and she to me that are as binding, if not more, than marriage vows. And I am bound by them, as her Master, until she leaves her father's house, and marries. Certainly, I will make it my responsibility that no harm comes to Hela, or to her good name and the good name of her father,and her two cousins. Of course I speak for the girl! What kind of a man do you suppose I am?" Thorin pronounced, with great majesty.

"What kind of a man, indeed? The kind of man who takes a friend's daughter as his apprentice, promises her to his nephew, then screws her when she's too young to know any better, and he knows she and the boy are involved, then tops it off by leaving her flat at the end of her apprenticeship, after he has publicly promised marriage, in front of all her mother's and father's kin! But you know Thorin, brother. I would not say too much against him, for he's a fine man, a great warrior, and a great king, but he has never learned how to treat a decent woman! If there is a bigger whoremaster and heartbreaker in Middle Earth, than our Thorin, I've never known of him." Oin said to Gloin.

I think he thought he was whispering.

To his credit, Thorin did not even flinch.

"Are you satisfied, Gandalf?" he asked.

"Yes. I am."

"Then it is settled." Thorin pronounced.

"And try whispering a little quieter, next time, Oin!" he added.

"You can at least give my kinswoman a double share of treasure, to compensate for the damage done to her reputation, when you didn't immediately follow through on your promise!" Oin insisted.

"Did you tell every Dwarf on Mahal's Green Earth, Hela?" Thorin insisted.

"No, Uncle. You did. At Hela's party to celebrate her gaining her Mastery, you drank an entire keg of dark Gondorian ale, and stood up on a table and made an announcement that when Kili stood as Hela's groom, you would be standing beside her, already, as her husband. In front of every Took on God's Green Earth, Hela's parents, and most of the Dwarves in this room." Fili reminded him.

"Mahal take me! I'll give you three shares of treasure, Hela."

"Kili and I mean to be married, in the Shire, where he's of age to marry, as soon as we return to the West. Will you pay for Kili's and my wedding? In full?" I asked.

"You drive a hard bargain, girl! At this rate it would be cheaper to keep my promise! I never said I would not."

"Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror, I wouldn't marry you if you had the last—"

Bilbo interrupted me with a plate of food and a mug of ale.

"Here you are, Hela. I got a plate together for you. You really ought to eat something, if you've been working all day."

So, I managed to get some dinner in.

* * *

After dinner, Thorin gave me an imperious look, and motioned for me to walk outdoors with him.

Well I did fancy a smoke under the stars, so I went.

"You did that deliberately, girl!"

"So what if I did? Whatever you agreed to give me, I deserve it."

"You deserve for me to turn you over my knee and spank you!"

Thorin laughed, at the thought, and put his hand under my chin, and tickled me a little, and then ran one of his fingers down my wispy little goatee.

"What's this? You call this a beard? You might as well shave it off. You've got more hair on your toes! Little Hela and her downy little wisp of a ginger beard. When did you ever grow your beard?"

"Well, I started getting a little fuzz two years ago, when I came of age. But my beard, it started coming in right around Yuletide. It grew this much in a week, too. But, considering that this is all it has grown in, I think it's all the beard I'm likely to get. But, it's better than nothing."

"Much better. I don't fancy a woman who's beard is rough and coarse and bushy, like a man's...two years since you came of age. And five, since your apprenticeship ended. Has it really been that long..."

Well, I knew the dirty old bird well enough to know what was coming, next, and I know myself well enough, too.

He had tried it once, this night, and saw that his advances weren't exactly unwelcome, and now he was having another go.

Well, he wasn't going to get away, so easily.

I got my pipe out and backed a step or two away.

"Let's not be so hasty, Thorin. Not when I haven't yet seen a penny out of you, for all my trouble. Your purse looks as heavy with gold as mine is empty. Balance that out, and then we can negotiate a truce." I said.

"Durin's short and curly second beard, girl, haven't you got a sentimental bone in your body?"

"No! And considering that a greedy, vengeful, foul-mouthed, warmongering, dirty old whoremaster like you isn't likely to put one there, I don't think I'll have such a thing, any time soon! Besides, you don't need an excuse, Master. I was young, and pretty and hot-blooded, and you only did what any dirty son of an orc's warg like you, would. After all, my apprenticeship was ended. Despite what my father and Oin and Gloin think, there were only words between us, Thorin, and nothing more. I am promised to Kili, there are more than words between us. I don't hold you to your drunken promises."

"Damn it girl, unsentimental is one thing, but you don't have to be so fookin' cold-blooded!"

"What else should I be, with you, Master Thorin? When I was you apprentice, I might as well have been your dog! Or a pair of boots. I served you faithfully, and even if I did not take to your every command without protest, I took to them! All of them! Even the ones that put me on my back, or on my knees! And I was rewarded for my service the way a cruel master rewards an old dog! No, that's not true. Even a cruel master has the decency to put down and old dog! You made a lot of talk about an unbreakable bond, and promised me marriage, but when my apprenticeship was up, well, you threw me away like an old pair of shoes! I am fortunate that Kili forgave me, for serving my master too well, or I'd be in a sad state!"

"Do you think I intended to abandon you, completely, Hela, my girl?" Thorin demanded.

"Yes, you old whoremaster, and no matter what kind of fine fancy words you use to make it wound like you didn't, you already did abandon me, completely!"

I stalked back into the house, where I ran into Fili, who was jolly and drunk, and Kili, who was worried and drunk.

"What was that all about? Is Uncle Thorin finally going to behave like, well, like a gentleman to you, or are the two of you just going to bicker and fight through our entire journey?" Kili asked me.

"When have your Uncle and I not bickered and fought, when we are in close quarters?"

"You don't take it as lightly as you want us to believe." Kili complained.

"You had a five year reprieve, from their bickering, little brother." Fili interjected.

"Too short, by far!"

"You ought to get on your hind legs and kick a little, Kili. If Hela was my girl, I would."

"Why should I? I know which one of us has Hela's heart, and I have known, for twenty years, not fifteen. There is no one on this Earth, save you and our Uncle that I am closer to than Hela. How can I then, be jealous of my own Uncle? Especially when Hela's heart is that last part of her that interests him. And I hate to say it, because I mean Uncle no disrespect, but I do not think he made his promises in earnest." Kili replied.

Now Fili laughed in earnest.

"Hela's heart? Her heart, Kili? By Mahal's shorter and curlier beard, if such a thing had not turned to a lump of rock beneath those stupendous tits of hers, then Hela's heart is blacker than midnight in the mines of Moria! It's not her heart she loves you with, Kili, you want to look a little lower!"he said.

I wished that Fili hadn't made his drunken little joke, because whereas it is true that I have little use for love, seeing how well it made Mum and Da's lives turn out, Kili is a prfoundly romantic man, and loves me with a far truer and greater depth of feeling than I deserve.

As for me, I have known Kili, as my very best, closest, and dearest friend, and as a woman knows a man, for twenty years, and if my black little shut-up stony heart would open enough to love any man, then it would be Kili.

I was not a happy woman when my Master cast me out like I was an unclean thing, and though I would never admit it to Thorin, I was shattered.

Not for the reasons you think, either.

Kili steadfastly stayed by my side, uncaring about the whispers in the Blue Mountains that he had been cuckolded by his Uncle, and that I was Thorin's red-headed whore, no longer fit for marriage to the lowest miner.

He risked my father's wrath and my mother's disdain that he was only a prince and not the king, to come to our homestead and formally ask for my hand, on one knee, declaring his undying love.

Just when it seemed that my father's people had judged me to be only Thorin's red-headed whore, no longer fit for marriage to the lowest miner, disgraced and ruined, my ten years of hard work wasted, Kili gave me my braiding ceremony, with King Dain, himself, as our witness, and made of me not just an honest woman, but very nearly a princess.

I have Kili to thank that I have any honor at all, and without honor, I wouldn't have my position in the Shire as blacksmith, or my land, or my smithy.

I wish I could love him, the way he does me.

Though my blood is hot, my heart is cold to even the thought of love.

For I have heard for 35 years from my battling parents that it was love that brought them together, and love that binds them, and keeps them together.

If that is love's work, I want no part of it.

But I knew that Fili's words wounded Kili, and I hated to see him wounded.

"You know less about love or a woman's heart than any Dwarf, Man or Elf in Middle Earth, Fili! Well, you can't get to the Lonely Mountain on your big, swinging cock, so I'm looking forward to seeing how you'll get by!" I retorted.

Fili just laughed again.

"That depends on whether or not we stop in Rivendell. Elf men are beautiful and cold, and their women, though beautiful, are anything but frigid, for it!"

I heard Thorin in Bilbo's dining room, calling for me.

"He thinks he's got me over a barrel! That shows what he knows! I'll slip out and ride back to the Green Dragon, and come back here at first light. After everyone's gone to sleep, Kili, maybe you can sneak away."

"Good idea." Kili agreed.

* * *

Oh, I thought I was a clever girl, but when I got to the Green Dragon, I found my door to my rooms unlocked.

There was a fire burning in my hearth, and the kettle was on.

And sitting in one of my two chairs, by the window, in just his tunic and breeches, smoking his pipe, was Thorin Oakenshield.

"I'm expecting Kili, in a little while, my King, so you had better make yourself scarce."

"I will go after I have said what I have come to say. Did you suppose that your Master would not know that your room at the inn overlooked your smithy? Or that the good Hobbits who gave you your position because you learned your trade from Master Thorin, who fought the goblins with Bullroarer Took, wouldn't tell me? That Oleander's brother, Dagobert, wouldn't let me into your rooms?"

I pulled up a chair next to Thorin, and he passed his pipe to me.

One thing about the Lord of New Belegost, he doesn't smoke cheap pipeweed.

"You can't fault me for trying."

"You have tried hard, Hela, and done well for yourself, in these years I have kept my distance so you might establish yourself. I had not abandoned, you, lass, as you and Oin think I have."

"You might have at least written to me, Thorin. Or met with me, even once. But if that's the way you've cast this matter in your lordly mind, then far be it for me to try and change it."

I passed the pipe back to Thorin.

"You bought yourself a fine piece of land to build on, Hela. That shack by your smithy, someday that shall be your barn. And in the corner of the parcel, in the hillside, you'll build your Hobbit hole. And a garden off to the side, with a path and a fence and a bench, like cousin Bilbo's. And a fine smithy made of stones from the River Lune. A fine homestead for you and Kili, with room for him to build another barn, to make his pelts and tan his hides. Maybe even enough left over for a few sacks of booty for Mum and Da? Is that really all you dream of, Hela, the Fire-Hammer? As not just a Dwarf and a Berserker, but as a Took?" he asked.

"No." was all I said.

Thorin passed me back the pipe.

"I am glad to hear it. Not that I think you should not build on your land. But a young woman only 35, who will not be able to legally marry her fiancé until another 35 years have gone by, should have better dreams that that. I know you, Hela Took. I know what you have dreamed of, all your life."

Thorin got up out of the chair, and stood over me, looking down his nose at me.

From his great height of kingly majesty, again.

"You have dreamed that you should be at my side, when I take the Lonely Mountain back, just as your father fought at my side when the dragon came, and after. Why should you settle for this, only, when you and your father might live as you were meant to, as Dwarves Under the Mountain? You as great and terrible a warrior as he, and as great and terrible a hero, with Kili for one of your husbands and me for the other, and the crown of the greatest Dwarf-kingdom in all Middle Earth on your head. With your feet up to their ankles in a river of gold. You deserve no less, daughter of Loki. For the gods of the Aesir, themselves, have marked you for great things. Never forget who you are, Hela, my girl. Not just a Dwarf, but a Berserker, of Durin's folk. Not just a Hobbit, but a Took."

And he caught me off guard, the wily old bastard did, and lifted me out of my chair and held me so close to his body that neither of us might as well have worn any clothes, and kissed the breath from my body.

"Never forget that you may marry my nephew, the love of your girlhood, but woman, you belong to me!" Thorin growled.

He let me go, and I fell back into my chair, so completely unmanned that I hadn't wit to make any reply.

So, that was one victory for Thorin and one for me, a fine way to start our quest.

And I had not rolled over for him as if I was his red-headed whore.

One thing though, I had not done after the long day's work was bathe, so I went down the hall to have my bath, and when I got back to my room fresh from it, my prince had come.

Thorin had left his pipe there, in his haste, and Kili's clothes were hung over a chair and his boots were under it.

He was lying across my bed, as naked as I was under my dressing gown, with his arms folded behind his head, smoking Thorin's pipe and grinning as if he had the world by the arse.

I locked my door, lodged the other chair in front of it, and hung my towel over the back.

"Who's afraid of the big bad warg, tonight? Not I, and for all his kingly majesty, tonight Uncle will have to listen to Bombur snore, kipped on one of your cousin's floors, while I have you, and his pipe, and his tobacco, and a warm bed to sleep in!"

"Kili, you have a fair share of princely majesty, yourself. And when you win, I win! So that's two for me and one for Thorin, an even better way to begin our quest!"

"I've got two for you, Hela, maybe even three! My love for you gives me the strength of ten men! As so does your beauty. Whenever we have been parted a long time, I am amazed each time I see you, at your beauty, my Hela, of your body and your soul."

"I don't know who you see when you look at me, Kili."

"I see the girl I've loved since I was a boy."

Kili pulled me into the bed and took me in his arms.

"I see the only woman in the world, for, to me, there are no others. Only you. The only woman I have ever loved, the only lover I have ever had, the only one I will ever need. The day I met you, you set a fire in me that burns brighter and hotter every day. I wish you could see yourself the way I see you, Hela, only for a moment. If you could, you would never disparage yourself like that, again."

Kili's father was a great poet, so great that his works are read by Elves and Men as well as Dwarves.

And though his looks and his height and build and feckless warrior's heart came from Thorin, through Kili's mother, Thorin's sister, my Kili had the soul of a poet, like his father before him.

That night, in that room, for that moment, I very nearly loved him.

And I made sure to tell him so.

* * *

"You would have words with me, Kili lad, before we depart?"

Kili finished closing his saddlebags, without looking at his Uncle.

"You'll think me disrespectful, Uncle."

"I might. But if you have something you'll need to say, you had better fookin' say it now, lad. After all, you may not quite be a man, but you are not a boy, anymore. Out with it."

Thorin was surprised the way Kili turned around, and looked him straight in the eye.

"I have held my tongue for five years, Thorin. Are you sure you wouldn't rather I kept this to meself?"

"I'm sure. In fact, I'm sure I deserve it."

"I can't believe the way you've treated Hela! She has a heart, though she pretends not to, and you shattered it! You had no right, from the start, to take her, whether she wanted you to, or not, and you had no reason, after she was faithful and loyal to you for ten years to throw her away! You are the only father I've ever known, and though I've lost none of my love for you, Thorin, I have lost much of the respect I've had for you, if not as a king, then as a man, who ought to have the common decency a miner has, let alone a king! Hela Took is practically my wife, she's not your red-headed whore! So, unless you intend to make good on your promise that we will both be her bridegroom on her wedding day, then you had better keep your hands out from under her kilt! It's a bad business when a son has to raise his fist to his father, but I'll do it, even if you break my arm for it, by Mahal's forge, I will!"

Thorin put both his hands on Kili's shoulders.

"I was wrong, Kili. You may be a lad, but you're not a boy, anymore at all! So I will talk to you, as one man does to another. I love her as much as you do, Kili. And that is why I left her alone. But I have thought on it, these past five years, and though I am unfit, not as a King, but as a man, to be a good husband to any woman, I can find no way around it. On one hand, I cannot break my promise, or take back the vows I made to Hela. On the other, I have done her wrong, and shattered her heart, and I fear the only feelings she has left for this miserable old bastard are anger and lust. But if I am her King, and my word means a damn thing, then I have to try and win her back. And were you not as my own son, I would knock your teeth out of your jaw, even for repeating that Hela is my red-headed whore. I have heard that from others of our race, and all of them have had to make do with a few less teeth after they said it."

Kili smiled, genuinely, like a great weight came off of his shoulders.

"Do you want me to try and convince her that you want to make amends?"

"That's up to me, Kili, lad. Have you had your say, then?"

"I have."

"Good. I'm glad we spoke of the oliphaunt in the dining hall, before it had a shite all over our quest. Where's your brother?"

"At the magistrate's office, with Marigold and his three children. He's getting married, and having their names appended, formally, so they can be called daughters and son of Fili."

Thorin laughed, uproariously.

"Durin's beard, he does think he's going to die! He'll regret this after we take the Lonely Mountain, but it's about time! Still, I don't think he'll keep to the vow to forsake all others."

"But Uncle, this means Fili's son is no longer a bastard. Which means he's Fili's heir. And Fili the Younger is half-Hobbit. Won't that make trouble for us?"

"Marigold Brandybuck's mother is a Took. And all the Brandybucks have Tookish blood, one way, or the other. Fili's son isn't half a Hobbit, he's half a Took. That will make all the difference. Why do you think I allowed Gandalf's Mr. Baggins to be our burglar? When you're up against it, Kili lad, and the situation seems next to fookin' hopeless, it's better to have a Took at your side than a cave troll with a catapult full of flaming wargshite. Don't ever forget that."


	2. Wild As A Wilderland Wolf

**Chapter Two: Wild As A Wilderland Wolf**

**Bree, Twenty years earlier.**

It was the first time that Fili and Kili had ever been so far from the Blue Mountains since their mother had brought them all the way from the Iron Hills, before either of them was ten years old.

It was also the first time they had been allowed to take a long journey with their Uncle.

They were both trying their best not to seem to be boys or wide-eyed rubes and they thought they were doing very well.

Actually, they were driving their Uncle mad with their awkwardness and their inexperience at travelling, and everyone they met could tell that they were boys on their first journey into the wide world with their proud but exasperated father.

But no one said anything to them about it.

Bree was the last place on their journey.

In Bree they were meeting with Dwalin, and he was taking them back to the Blue Mountains, whereas Uncle Thorin was going on, alone.

Fili and Kili were at the Prancing Pony, saving a table for their Uncle when they saw a red-haired girl swagger in the front door.

Time stopped.

"I think I'm in love." Kili gasped.

"I think I'm in trouble." Fili agreed.

She was nearly barefoot and barelegged, wearing a black and red kilt that came down to her knees, and a short sleeved brick red tunic, with a black and red leather jerkin on top.

Her face was sooty, her hair was wild and the braids in it were sloppy, she had a sword and a dagger hanging from her belt, an axe in a holster across her back,and a large heavy blacksmith's hammer in her hand.

She had Dwarven tattoos on her arms, her legs and her face, and seemed totally unaware that she was either pretty, or a girl.

She walked over to the door.

"Da? Do you want me to just find a table? Alright!"

Fili and Kili noticed, though.

"Fili! Look at that girl!"

"Don't worry, little brother, I'm looking!"

She seemed to be about their age.

They had seen many girls on their journey, and many their own age, and Fili who was less shy than his brother, had done more than look, but this girl, she was something they had never seen.

"I think she saw us! I think she's coming over! What do I do?" Kili asked

"Try not to act the fool. And let me talk to her."

"You had better not talk to her the way you talk to other girls! Or the angry Dwarf father who is three steps behind her will chop off both our heads!"

"Quiet, Kili, she's coming over!"

Fili was right, the red-haired girl walked right up to their table.

"Hey? Are you lads Dwarrows? Like me?" she asked.

She seemed really excited about meeting them.

That made three of them.

Her burr was as thick as Dwalin's, and the hand she held out for them to shake was small, hard, sun-browned, and as tattooed as Dwalin's.

They both stood up.

"Yes. I am Fili, nephew of Thorin Oakenshield, and this is my younger brother, Kili. We are from the Blue Mountains. Where are you from? The Iron Hills?"

"I'm Hela, daughter of Fenrir the Berserk. No, we live alone, in the Hills of Evendim. Mum and Da and me. Between the Blue Mountains and the Shire. On the border of Buckland. Where the Hobbits live."

Fili looked at her furry feet in a pair of sandals.

"Then, your Mum is a Hobbit?" Kili interrupted.

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?"

"But you're talking funny to her, like you were making a formal announcement!"

Hela interrupted them.

"Yes, Oleander Took. A daughter of The Old Took. Grand-daughter of Bandobras Took, who fought with your Uncle against the Great Goblin Invasion, a long time before any of us were born. Can I sit with you?"

Kili looked terrified.

"Of course." Fili said.

"Thankee." she said, slung the hammer onto the table with a_ whump!,_ and sat down.

They all sat down, and the three young Dwarrows were talking excitedly amongst themselves when a very angry-looking and burly dwarf strode in the front door.

He was about two inches shorter than Balin or Thorin, but from side to side he was the largest Dwarf either of them had ever seen.

His great barrel chest might have been carved from stone, and his massive arms were larger than most Dwarves' legs.

Hela's father's brown hair and beard, barely tamed by a series of braids, stuck out from his head like the mane of an angry lion.

He was as covered in Berserker tattoos as Dwalin, and wore a cloak made out of a huge bear's skin, the paws crossed over his great chest, and the head, with some teeth still in it, serving as his hood.

He wore the bear's claws around his neck, partly as a decoration.

And partly to show that he was about as close to being a large, angry bear as any human creature could be.

"Fili, is that Fenrir the Berserk?"

Kili spoke in a very small voice.

They were both awestruck, and terrified, to meet such an infamous Dwarf, in person.

Well, more terrified as they were in the company of his daughter.

"Run, Kili! Run for your life, little brother!"

But it was too late.

Fenrir saw the red-haired girl sitting with two young men, and with a great roar like the bear he was wearing, immediately went berserk.

"Durin's beard! What do you lads think you're doing! That's my daughter, you sons of…"

Hela jumped up, and stood in front of her two new friends.

"Da, stop! It's alright! We were only talking! You're always telling me it's a crime I don't know any other Dwarves. Well, how am I going to if you're going to scare them all away?" she said.

Fenrir the Berserk still had some control over his rages, especially when it came to harming women, children, creatures smaller than him, and members of his own race.

With a great yell, he brought both of his fists down on the closest vacant table, splitting it in two, and then he picked up a chair, and smashed it against the wall, where it shattered into splinters.

Then, he took a deep breath.

"Well, that's better, now. And what about you boys? You look like you ought to have better manners than you do! Well?"

Fenrir took a good look at the two lads who were not doing a very good job at trying not to be paralyzed with fear.

"We're sorry! We were only talking! Please don't kill us!" Kili interjected.

Fili had been trying to come up with a rather more smooth thing to say to Fenrir, but begging for his life would do, in a pinch.

"Honest and truly, Uz-Fenrir, sir, we were only talking to Miss Hela! She was just saying as how my brother and I were the only Dwarves, besides you, that she had ever seen in her life, and we were talking about how that could possibly be, and Miss Hela was telling us, Uz-Fenrir, sir, about your homestead, that's all!'" Fili added.

"Is that true, Hela? Did you approach these boys, first?"

"Yes, Da. But only because they were Dwarves, like us. How would you feel, if you were my age and you'd never seen any of your own kind, in your life, besides your Da?"

He thought about it.

"Well, I suppose there's no harm in it, at that! Don't look so scared, lads, I'm just a crazy old man, who's seen too much war. Wait now? There is something familiar about you boys. Are you related to Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, the Lord of New Belegost, rightful King Under the Mountain?" he asked.

"We're his nephews, Uz-Fenrir, sir." Kili said bravely.

Fenrir put away his axe and his anger turned to laughter.

"I don't believe it! And I almost broke your heads, when I've sworn an oath to protect the Heirs of Durin with my life!"

That struck the red-haired girl's fearsome father as funny, and he laughed as he sat down with his daughter and Fili and Kili.

"You don't know me, but I know your Uncle, well. And your cousin, Dwalin. And likely all the Dwarrows you know."

"We know of you, Uz-Fenrir, sir. We've heard all about you." Fili replied

"Are you really him? Fenrir the Berserk? Did you really bite the wurm Smaug as you retreated from the Lonely Mountain?" Kili asked, excitedly.

"I did not fookin' well retreat! A Berserk of the line of Loki never retreats!" Fenrir protested

"Death first!" Hela shouted, pounding her fist on the table.

"Death first!" Fenrir agreed, raising someone's glass.

"Death first!" Fili and Kili chorused.

They all had a drink, and Fenrir continued his story.

"Thorin and Dwalin pulled me off of the dragon and dragged me away. But I left a tooth in his hide, I did! That son of an orc's warg dragon! I hope my tooth pains him every time he moves his filthy fookin' neck!"

Fenrir pointed to a missing canine tooth.

Then, Thorin and Dwalin walked into the Prancing Pony, together, and they both took a step back.

"Fenrir! You crazy old bastard, ye are still alive!" Dwalin boomed.

"Dwalin! By my beard, I canna believe it!"

The two Dwarves butted heads, and then embraced.

Fenrir was about to kneel before his King, but Thorin embraced him, too.

"It's good to see you, my old friend! I hoped it was true that you married a clever pretty Tookish lass who could keep your temper. I'm glad that madness had not taken you, the way it took my father."

"It very nearly did. But I was smart enough to marry not just a witch, but a Tookish witch. And this little ginger girl is Oleander's and my miracle. Our daughter, Hela. We were childless for thirty years following our marriage, first because we didn't want a bairn, and then because we couldn't have one. We prayed to all the gods of the Aesir and the Valar. But then we prayed to father Loki, and he answered our prayers. You can see his mark on her, her hair is the same shade as Loki's, the color of fire. That is why we named her for his only daughter."

"The Queen of Hel?" Dwalin chuckled

"It is a good name for my girl. I will have no other children, so I have trained her in the way of the berserk. And she's just beginning to learn blacksmithing. Where's your manners, Hela? This is your King, whom you are bound by your blood and those tattoos on your hands and around your eyes, to serve! And to protect, with your life! Well? Stand up and bow, or summat?' Fenrir insisted.

Hela stood up, and bowed, stiffly.

"Shouldn't she curtsey?" Fili asked Kili.

"I'll make you curtsey, laddie." Hela told him as she sat down.

"How?"

"Two falls, sweet prince? Two falls out of three, you'll see who ought to be in a dress!"

She was grinning as she said it, and Fili grinned back.

"If any girl can beat me two falls out of free, I'll buy a fookin' dress!" he insisted.

"Fili! That's enough disrespect out of you! Go on, Fenrir. Don't mind the boy. He thinks he knows all about women."

"Aye, and this girl of mine don't know she is one. Sit yourselfdown, Hela. You're getting too old to beat up on boys!"

Fenrir shot his daughter a look, and she sat down, too.

"We were just talking about that. Smithing. I told Hela that I'm learning the trade from you, Uncle Thorin." Fili piped up.

The group of Dwarves sat at the table and ate together and drank together, far into the night.

At some point, Thorin promised that he would think about taking Hela as an apprentice, when she was older.

Impulsively, Fenrir asked his old comrades and Thorin's nephews to visit with him, for a few days.

Oleander was on her best behavior, the whole time, and she encouraged her husband's old comrades to stop and stay at their homestead, as they passed through.

"Hela doesn't know anyone of her father's race, except Fenrir. And she has no friends her own age, except for her Took and Brandybuck cousins. Not to mention that Fenrir has no company but mine. And we do not always see eye-to-eye. Even if you gentlemen are busy with your work, the boys are welcome to spend some time, here. I will look after the three of them, and make sure no one makes too much trouble."

"It's not a bad idea, Thorin. Fili and Kili's closest friends are Ori and Gimli. And Gimli's fifteen years younger than Fili, and Ori's ten. If you take into account Hela's half-Hobbit, they're about the same age. And you're only thirty or forty years away from thinking about their marriage." Dwalin reminded him.

"That is what I was thinking about. And Fenrir, too, whether he knew it, or not." Oleander added

"I'd marry you, Hela." Kili blurted out.

Hela's face turned red, and Fili shoved Kili onto the floor of Oleander's kitchen, and then Hela shoved Fili onto the floor.

Fili got up.

"If you keep knocking me around, I'll forget you're a girl!"

Hela leapt up, and said something in Khuzdul to Fili that made even Thorin's ears burn, and tackled him.

Kili, who had his fair share of losing wrestling matches to his older brother, joined the fray.

"STOP!" Thorin insisted.

"Fili! Outside! Now!"

"But Uncle Thorin…"

"If you're going to act like a brayin' jackass, then get yourself outside, to the barn, wi' the other animals! You're already to sleep there, well you can go, now!"

"Don't make him leave, Mr. Thorin. It was my fault. I started it." Hela volunteered.

"No, I started it. I said something stupid." Kili interjected.

"You've one more chance to behave. Well, I'll say one thing. No man can remain stupid, listening to the wisdom of Tooks. I think your wife has made a fine point, Fenrir. These lads have got to learn how to behave around a woman."

"My Hela just has to learn how to behave around anybody. She's wild as a Rhosgobel rabbit." Fenrir agreed.

"Then we'll call it settled." Oleander decided.

Hela always looked forward to seeing her friends Fili and Kili; they were the only friends she had in her solitary life, and she was the only girl they knew of their own race who was their own age.

They were never allowed to go off alone, either Thorin, Dwalin, or Fenrir were always close by, for obvious reasons, but all in all it had been a lucky meeting for Fenrir the Berserk and his daughter.

Especially for Hela.

She didn't really have any friends her own age apart from her Took and Brandybuck cousins, and they did not often come as far as the Hills of Evendim to see her.

However, Thorin's Halls in the Blue Mountains were not even a day's journey away from Fenrir's homestead, and Thorin and Dwalin visited with Fenrir, often, with Thorin always bringing his nephews along.

Dis, the boys' mother, entered into an agreement with Oleander, bringing Fili and Kili to visit with Hela once a week.

The women supervised them much more closely; the three were never allowed out from under the watchful eyes of their mothers.

Certainly, Thorin and Fenrir approved of a friendship developing between Hela and Thorin's nephews, but that was all they wanted to develop, and Fili, Kili and Hela were all at that age when young lads get young girls into a lot of trouble, and neither of them thinks too much about it, until it's too late.

Now, Kili was ten years younger than his brother, and, so far his little romances had not amounted to much.

He had the tendency to mistake every stirring in his belly as stirrings in his heart; he was one of those lads who was always in love and always broken-hearted, and so far, that was all he'd ever got from a girl, a broken heart.

Thorin had never seen him, however, as head over heels as he was with Hela; Kili's father had been a poet and though Kili didn't at first seem the type, though he had a warrior's heart, he had a poet's soul, and he was already composing verses for Fenrir's ginger girl.

Now Fili was a different story.

He thought very highly of girls and women, but not so highly of love.

When he was Kili's age, maybe a little younger, there had been a certain merry widow in the Blue Mountains, and after that Fili was off to a running start, so far as women went.

More troubling, he seemed to take Hela more seriously, first, because she was of his people and his own age, and second, because they got on very well.

Not as well as she and Kili, did; now they got on almost as well as you would expect two lads to, but it wasn't Kili that worried Thorin and Fenrir, it was Fili.

And neither of them had any notion that Oleander Took had explained the birds and the bees to her daughter when she was just a small child, and had put her daughter wise as to both Kili and Fili.

Not to mention that Oleander also made sure that every morning, Hela drank had a large mug of the tea that would prevent much of the trouble her husband and his kind were worried about.

Oleander had begun to teach her daughter how to make her Tookish remedies from the age of five or six, upwards.

That was the first one she learned.

At any rate, the two Dwarves, occasionally enlisting Dwalin, too, kept a close eye on Hela if she was with Fili, alone.

When she was with both boys, they didn't supervise Hela so closely, and believing both Kili and Hela to be a bit bashful and basically ignorant of what it was they were expected to do, hardly watched them at all.

It occurred to Oleander and Dis that there would be conspiracy between the three young Dwarrows for someone to do something, but unlike Fenrir and Thorin, they knew that boys would be boys and girls would be girls no matter what you did, and that forewarned was forearmed.

Besides, there were many marriages of forty, fifty and sixty years that began in the bloom of young love, and Oleander had little hope, before, that her disadvantaged daughter, living in the wild with a savage father would ever be suited for marriage.

Just as Dis, who had made a very bad marriage with two brothers from the Iron Hills that she hardly knew often worried about her sons making a bad match with a woman they had only met three or four times.

And Hela had now befriended two Dwarven princes, who by the laws of their race, were, as brothers, both permitted to marry the same woman?

Oleander and Dis would both have been satisfied with that outcome, and they weren't about to upset that apple cart.

* * *

The first thing you might ask it, other than this being my memoir, why should you care about the doings of three young Dwarves somewhere in the middle of nowhere during some summer in which no great things happened in Middle Earth?

Because we weren't just anybody, and although we didn't grow up like people who could decide the destinies of realms, we were.

Destined, to become for Middle Earth either great sinners or great saints.

For example, Fili and Kili had an impressive pedigree from their fathers, Dis' two husbands that was as full of glory and shame as the story of the Kings Under the Mountain, and their downfall.

Fili and Kili were the sons of two Dwarven brothers who were both famous and infamous, Vargbrand and Lothinwaen of the Iron Hills, the sons of Cain, brother of Nain, who was at the time, King of the Iron Hills.

And most Dwarrows will tell you that it was never the best idea for Thorin's sister to marry the sons of Cain.

The Heirs of Durin are known for having hot blood and fiery tempers, and Vargbrand, son of Cain was well known as "the Great Beast" when he married Dis, daughter of Thrain, daughter of Thror.

It did, however, seem like a fine idea, at the time.

Vargbrand was considered, in his youth, to be one of the handsomest men in Middle Earth, of any race.

Women fell in hordes to his charms, and he was said to be one of the great lovers of the ages, hung like a stallion with the stamina of a raging bull, and more expert in the art of love than the oldest Elf in Middle Earth could hope to be.

This square-jawed Dwarven Apollo was blue-eyed, blond, burly and bonny, standing almost five foot four, and he was dashing Captain-General of the army of the Iron Hills, famous for his victories over the orc and goblin hordes of the North, which were so crushing to the Enemy that they truly feared him, calling him the Great Beast.

Vargbrand was a military genius; he is still widely spoken of, openly by Men and Dwarves, and begrudgingly by Elves as one of the greatest generals of the Third Age.

In his time, he was regarded as a great hero by Dwarves and Men alike.

Who better then, but this stalwart hero, this handsome prince, to marry the Princess of Erebor?

Well, there was always his fair-skinned, raven-haired, mahogany-eyed younger brother, the moody, mercurial and magnificent Warrior Poet Lothinwaen, of whom it was said was the finest bowman in Middle Earth.

Lothinwaen produced his first epic poem at 13, fought his first battle at 14, under the command of his 29-year old brother, and by the time he was thirty was renowned for his literary works and his military prowess as his brother's chief lieutenant.

Lothinwaen was an incurable romantic, who had been wildly in love with Dis since meeting her under the Lonely Mountain when they were little more than children, and one of his most famous works, _The Queen of Light and Shadow_, and epic poem set in the First Age of Middle Earth, written by Lothinwaen in Weston, Quenya, Sindarin and Khuzdul, was inspired by Dis.

He was 24 when that work was published, and it was widely read by all races in all languages; it made Lothinwaen so famous that if he went to great cities in public that women of all races would mob him in the streets.

In the Shire, my mother taught both _The Saga of Durin the Deathless_ and _The Twilight of the Aesir_, both of which were the work of the great poet Lothinwaen.

Why then, would Thorin Oakenshield caution his sister on the eve of her journey to the Iron Hills that she should call off the wedding?

Well, the sons of Cain had some rather nasty skeletons clanking around in their mithril-plated closet.

The orcs called Vargbrand the Great Beast because his cruelty to the Enemy was voluptuous; the only thing that he enjoyed more than killing them was inventing new tortures to give them pain and terror.

Dashing Vargbrand was also a moody, foul-tempered afficianado of expensive Elvin absinthe, an inveterate satyr whose desires to ravish beautiful men were nearly equal to his appetite for beautiful women.

He had an entire secret life devoted to the forbidden texts of ancient Dwarrow magic, written in runes on stone tablets in Old Khuzdul; Vargbrand was, reputedly an alchemist and a sorcerer, who used pure Sindari absinthe and sexual excess not as a casual intoxicant, but to aid him in his quest to see and know that which could only be seen and known by the Maiar, the Valar, and the Aesir.

Vargbrand had little feeling for any of his lovers, except for the princess he married and the great, enduring and tragic love of his life.

His brother, Lothinwaen.

It's little wonder that some referred to Vargbrand as the wickedest man in the world.

As for Lothinwaen, his brother was the single most important being in his life, holding the place of brother, lover, and dearest friend.

Lothinwaen devoted himself to the two great loves of his life, Dis and Vargbrand, and he suffered most from when Vargbrand was great and beastly, not to mention he was tormented by his forbidden love for his older brother.

Who had seduced him when he was 15, and Vargbrand was 30.

If you can call something like that seduction.

By the time he was in his twenties Lothinwaen was already a drunk of epic proportions.

Dis went to war right along with her brothers, he father, and her grandfather, and she had her courtship with the sons of Cain amid war, carnage, victory and tragedy. She married both brothers shortly after the Battle of Azanulbizar.

They were all young for marriage. Vargbrand was 45, Dis was 35, and Lothinwaen was 30.

They say that after the sons of Cain married Dis, the wedding night lasted for a month and the honeymoon for the next thirty or so years.

They must have had quite a disorderly house, the poet, the debauched mystic, and the last daughter of Erebor, and it may have stood the test if the long lifetimes of Dwarves if sons hadn't been born to it.

Ten years after Fili's birth, Dis was fleeing with her two sons back to the Blue Mountains, in the wake of a murder and suicide that left her without either of her husbands.

Who, you guessed it, supposedly crawled to each other as they were dying, made their peace with their last breaths, and died in each others' arms. Brothers to the very end of all things.

If you believe that sort of thing.

Kili did, Fili didn't.

He refused to believe that his mother stayed in the Iron Hills all summer so that she could visit her husbands' graves.

He thought that Dis had decided their disorderly house was no place to raise boys, and that she and Thorin had only told him and his brother that their fathers' were dead, so that they would not clamor to go to the Iron Hills with her.

But now that they were grown men, because Fili considered himself so, and Kili to be nearly a grown man, there was no harm in them coming to know their own fathers, again, was there?

He often told me that he was going to go to the Iron Hills with Kili, and find out for himself, and he told it to me for twenty years before he did it.

But that's a tale for another time.

Kili didn't remember much more of his father and his Uncle than voices and shadows, but Fili was ten when he left the Iron Hills, he remembered his father and his Uncle quite well.

Despite their horrible notoriety, none of Fili's memories were awful, at least not to him; to hear him talk neither of them were such bad men, they tried their best to be good fathers, it was just that their demons caught up to them, in the end.

And just as Thror's and Thrain's madness loomed over Thorin's life, and my father's own inability to control his rage and the vow our family took to guard the Heirs of Durin with our lives loomed over mine, so did those demons of their fathers haunt Fili and Kili.

Especially Kili, who had a tendency towards melancholy and poetry, which he tempered with his own loyal, fearless, and even reckless nature.

Fili, on the other hand, seemed more inclined to accept his father's legacy; he had inherited Vargbrand's charm, his good looks, and his genius for war; and, for better or worse, the Great Beast's satyriasis.

Fili certainly looked at it as better, not worse.

And, eventually, hundreds of satisfied customers, in Fili's case, all of them women, tended to agree with him.

As for me, well despite my father's eccentricites, we were quite a distinsguished family.

Our founding father was none other than the God of Fire and Mischief, himself.

In the time of Durin, when his folk forged Mjolnir for Thor, Loki took Freda the Fair for a concubine, a union from which my family were descended.

If you believe in that sort of thing.

Even if you don't, from the time of Durin, my family were the Berserker honor guard of the Heirs of Durin, bound by generations of tradition and unbreakable vows to guard their lives with our own.

It was on my shoulders to restore the greatness of my family name, after they were all but extinguished at the Battle of Azanulbizar, where my father was driven fairly close to mad.

Quite a cluster of tall orders for a Took who was wild as a Wilderland wolf, a reckless, brave, and romantic young bowman, and his fierce, fearless charming scoundrel of a brother.

There's an old Dwarrow proverb that says a man who can only see as far as the end of his cock will only go that far in life, but in those days, romance or no, I think that's all the further Fili and Kili could see, and it's where my attention was focused, too.

Oh well.

Sing as you go.

* * *

One year had passed since Kili and Fili had met Hela.

It was summer again, indeed, it was nearly the end of it, and by now, Oleander Took's conspiracy was fully realized.

Fili had taken stock of the situation and it was plain to him to see that Kili was really in love this time, arse over teacups.

It was also plain to him that, unlike most girls, Hela was about as interested in the whole mythology of love as a duck would be.

She considered both of them to be her real and true good friends, and she had an eye for both of them, as men, but Kili moreso, probably because of his persistent and incessant romantic sloshiness.

Then again, his brother wasn't a little boy, anymore, he had grown one beard in, if not the other, and he had a little sprinkling of hair on his chest, and some peach fuzz on his upper lip and his chin.

It was quite possible that Hela just liked Kili better.

So, Fili decided to be magnanimous, and serve as their lookout, and he decided he would keep Hela in his pocket for later, when she was a little older and wiser, and if she was still with Kili, well they were brothers, they shared everything and always had, as long as Fili had no romantic ideas, Kili probably wouldn't mind, too much.

Hela was pretty good at covering her tracks, and when her parents or Thorin were around, she didn't make eyes at Kili, or act all moony and love-struck.

Kili, on the other hand, was floating around in the clouds, if it wasn't for Fili covering his tracks and kicking him under the table every time he started making doe's eyes at Hela, the whole game would have been up, as soon as it had started, about six months before.

Maybe by Kili's timetable that wasn't such a long time, but by Hela's, she was getting ready to smack baby brother over the head with a rock and drag him into some bushes.

It wasn't as if Kili didn't know what he was supposed to be at, between having been educated by his brother and his Uncle, both in their explanations and in him walking into the wrong room at the wrong time quite often, Kili couldn't plead ignorance.

He was just taking his good old time.

Now, there was a certain infamous Elvin book, written in Sindarin, called _The 12 Nights of the Sindari_ that almost every man owned, every woman had peeked at and every mother and wife in Middle Earth had burnt.

The trick to that was you had to know Sindarin, or know somebody who did.

But then, a couple of hundred years ago, a young Dwarf prince of the Iron Hills, the warrior poet Lothinwaen, son of Cain, brother of King Nain took it upon himself to rewrite one of Middle Earth's most ancient and infamous books, translating it into Westron and writing in verse.

He created a frame story, of two star-crossed lovers, took out most of the boring parts and replaced them with some action and adventure and high drama, and added in a few refinements to the arts of love that the Elves had left out, then put a happy ending at the finish.

Lothinwaen had been such a great poet that all of his major works were read not only by Dwarves, but by Men and Elves, alike, but none were so well read as _The 12 Nights_.

Lothinwaen had been Fili's Uncle, and he was Kili's father.

Fili had read _The 12 Nights_, from a copy bound in Dragon-skin leather and written out an Lothinwaen's own hand, not to mention painstakingly illustrated by Fili's father, Vargbrand.

He was still, years after his heyday, considered one of the handsomest men of any race , one of the best military commanders and heroes of the Third Age, but, for his sexual excesses, penchant for torture and dabbling in ancient Khzdul texts regarding magic that were forbidden since the first age was remembered also as the Great Beast.

Kili had read all of his father's works but _The 12 Nights_, and Hela had read almost every book ever written, so Fili did her a favor and made sure he explained some of what was in the the dragon-hide bound book that winter.

Even before he got to some of the rather more dubious expressions of love in the book, Kili's eyes grew wide as saucers, and by the time Fili had given in a tolerable summary of the book, he had to ask his brother how much of those things that he had actually done.

"About half. Up to about the 5th Night. I aspire to three-quarters, to the 9th night, or the 10th, which I'm sure Uncle, has. But the 11th and the 12th is too exotic for my tastes, I think it's a little too exotic for most, but if that's what you think you'd like, most would disagree with me, but I don't see anything wrong with two men, or two women getting together, if that's what they like and no one gets hurt. Now those other bits, with all the paddling and tying up and whippings with a hickory stick, I think that's quite nasty, but, well who am I to judge. From what I hear, your Dad went up to the 11th hour, but the 12th was a bridge too far, even for him. Not for Vargbrand, the Great Beast though. He had all 12."

"I'd be happy with just getting to the eighth night. But you probably couldn't get most girls to go past the sixth. But I haven't even got to the end of the first. Can I see the book?"

"No! You're too young."

But Hela had been hatching a plot in her head all winter, and dragged both brothers into the wood on the other side of the hill that her house was built into, on a muggy, buggy, hot day.

While Kili went on ahead, Hela fell back a little, and handed Fili a bundle from the pack she had on.

"There's a swimming hole about another half a mile ahead. You stay back here, in this clearing, under that nice shady tree, for an hour or three. I made you some lunch, and snuck in a bottle of Da's home-made ale. Then you can come swimming, too. Give me the book."

"Oh, give you the book? So that's what this is all about! After you've conducted your business with my brother? You wouldn't have had to work so hard, Hela, if it was me."

"Well if I can't get more than a kiss out of my ardent suitor today, Fili, it just might be you! It's hard to believe his father was and both his uncles are some of the most the most infamous cocksman in Middle Earth, of any race. But maybe he's just shy."

"I hope so, for his sake! Because I'll give him until the end of the summer and then it's you and me, my ginger lassie, and we'll go all the way from the first night to the eighth in less than a week! Good luck."

Hela went off, and Kili with her, with Tyr, her one-year-old pup, of sorts, following behind, braking and wagging his tail.

Fili took off his tunic and his surcoat, and his boots, and sat under the tree in just his breeches, and unwrapped the bundle of his lunch.

There was enough food there for two men, but it was only lunch by Hobbit standards, and, like most Hobbits, Hela was a very good cook.

"The things a man does for his brother's good."

Fili was about halfway through his meal when company arrived.

Black-haired, blue-eyed Marigold Brandybuck, whose mother was one of Oleander Took's sisters.

She was about ten years older than Hela, and Fili had met up with her on his last trip to the Hills of Evendim.

"What are you doing all the way over here, Fili? I left my pony at Fenrir's homestead and I thought I'd only be walking over the hill, not up it and down again and all through the wood! If you wanted to go swimming at the Buckland swimming hole which is practically in my back-yard, you ought to've told me! I would have met you there!"

Marigold was in a bit of a bad mood, but lunch put her in a better one.

"We'll go swimming, in another hour or two. Hela's taken my brother there. To be alone."

Marigold laughed.

"So she's resorted to a boy's trick, has she? Every girl in Buckland and half in the Shire, their mothers tell them not to go to the swimming hole alone with a boy in the morning! If you want to go swimming, you go in the afternoon, with a group of people. Because EVERYBODY knows what goes on at that swimming hole, in the morning. That's why nobody goes until after two. And poor Kili, he's gone off alone with Hela! You don't know what she's like. She got her hands on a copy of the _12 Nights of the Sindari_, when she was about eight, and read it to us in Westron, and we all had a good time looking at the pictures! You wouldn't believe the way she talks about men, when they're nor around. Like they're made out of meat, and she's a slavering wolf! Oh, Kili's in trouble now!"

"You don't go to that swimming hole with boys, do you, Mari?"

"Certainly not! You're still a nice girl if you have one beau, but not if you cheat on him. Mind you, I know you've women everywhere waiting on you to pass through, again. But, I say, as long as when you are in these parts, you're with me, what business is it of mine what you do when you are not?"

"You're a sensible girl, Mari."

"Of course I am. I'm half Brandybuck, and half Took. We are very sensible folk."

* * *

Kili was about to ask Hela where this long, sweaty, muggy quest was taking them when they emerged out of the bush to find one of the most perfect swimming hole's that Kili had ever seen.

And there wasn't a soul in sight.

"Why isn't there anybody else here, on such a hot day?" he asked Hela.

"Nobody comes here in large groups until the afternoon."

"Why?"

"Because this is a place where people go, people like us, at night and in the morning, to be alone together. But I'm sweating in places I didn't know you could sweat from, so I'm going swimming, first."

Hela started getting undressed, and didn't stop.

"Are you taking off all your clothes?" Kili asked.

"Who swims in their clothes, Kili? Come on!"

Bella laid her clothes out over a rock and got into the water.

"Tyr! Mind the woods!"

Tyr went to keep watch; he would bark if anyone was approaching.

Kili hesitated for a moment, undressed, laid his clothes across another rock, and also jumped into the water.

The swimming hole was shaded by big, leafy trees, and the water was cool and refreshing.

Kili forgot about how nervous he was, and just started enjoying himself.

He and Hela splashed around for a long time, and then, she said something about being hungry, and climbed out of the water.

Watching her climb onto the bank in the pools of sunlight, Kili forgot all about food, and his nerves, and the heat of the day.

All the blood rushed from his head to the lower parts of his body, but Hela just lay down in the sun to dry off, so, acting as if nothing had come up, so did Kili.

"Kili? Guess what I swiped from your brother's pack while he wasn't looking?"

Grinning, Hela pulled THE BOOK out of her picnic basket, and flopped over on her stomach.

"Are we really going to look in it?"

"Well, I didn't steal it so that we could stare at the cover!"

It was a very well-written book, with fine verses and a good storyline, but Kili and Hela pretty much just looked at the illustrations, each of which had the most descriptive verse written under them.

By the time she closed the book and put it back in her picnic basket, Kili would not have rolled over on his back, again, for all the world, and he was pretty sure there was a hole in the ground, where he was lying.

"Kili, you've got a funny look on your face."

"I wish we hadn't done that, together."

"Didn't it make you curious?"

"Well, yes, but…but, you wouldn't want me to…to do anything about it, would you?"

"Kili, why else would I bring you all the way out here, to a place where we could be alone, and bring the book with me?"

"You mean you…you want me to do…something?"

"Well, you're a damn good kisser, Kili, but, well, don't you want to do anything else?"

"I can't!"

"Well, roll over onto your back, and I'll start."

"I can't do that, either!"

"Why? Because you've got an enormous cockstand? Mahal's hammer, that's the point."

Hela was lying very close to him, and without really thinking about what he was doing, without really knowing he had done it until he had, Kili had one of his hands on one of her breasts.

And she made this wonderful, lovely sighing sound that made all the hairs on the back of Kili's neck stand up…

Later, Kili told Hela that he loved her, as he took her in his arms.

"Did you have to say that, Kili?"

"Yes. Because it's true. I know you think that love is a crime a man perpetrates on a woman, to make her his servant and his prisoner, but I am not that man. And you could never be that woman. I will not be any less your friend because of my love for you. And I would not try to become your master. You can have your soul, Hela, all I want is your heart."

"Kili, I can't love you."

"You can't? Not that you don't? You can't?"

"Do you understand the difference. I-"

Kili cut Hela off in mid-sentence with a kiss.

"Are you sure all you want is my heart?" Hela asked him.

"Well…"

They both stretched out across the blanket Hela had laid down for their picnic.

Again

"Do we have time? Is it close to the time the Hobbits come to the swimming hole?"

"I don't know. If we make a lot of noise, it'll scare them off."

"Then we'll make a lot of noise."

* * *

Later, they ate their lunch, and went swimming again, and while they were in the water, Fili and Marigold showed up, and soon enough, the swimming hole was teeming with Tooks and Brandybucks, from little kids up to adults who had just got out of their tweens.

Young families came to picnic on the banks, and old men showed up with fishing rods, to dangle their feet in the cool water, smoke, fish, and nap.

Later on, when Thorin and Fenrir finally tracked them down, to take them back to Fenrir's homestead, why, nothing could have been more innocent than Fili and Kili and Hela having a swim with half of Long Cleeve and Buckland, at the local swimming hole.

They all went back to Fenrir's homestead, in his wagon, for dinner, and that night, as usual for summer, Fili and Kili went to sleep in the barn.

It was rainy that night, and a bit chilly and damp in the barn, but the weather was the last thing on the brothers' minds.

"Well?" Fili insisted.

"Well, what?"

"Well, nothing, you little son of an orc's warg! Tell me what happened?"

"Do you promise you won't tell anybody?"

"I swear!"

"Well, we've done it."

"What do you mean, you've done it? You can't have done it, already!"

"What do you think I mean?"

"I don't know, you haven't told me!"

"Well, it all seemed to happen so fast. I was just…touching Hela a little, you know, on her chest, and she made this wonderful sound. And she didn't mind when I kissed her, and I moved my hand down, a little lower. I don't think I had me hand in the right place at first, but then she put it, you know, right on the button and, I started getting very…passionate, and so did Hela, and…she…she.."

"She came her lot?"

"Right in my hand! Then I just, I don't know why, but when I took my hand away, I wanted to lick my fingers. So I did."

"You're a natural, little brother."

"And Hela's eyes got very wide, and her lip started to tremble and she said that if that was what I wanted…and she grabbed me by the short hairs on the back of my neck and pushed my head down. Down…_there_."

"She did what?"

"I just told you what she did! I just…she kept making that lovely noise and…and sighing and…I don't know if it's bad that I did, but…I didn't want to stop. Until she did it again."

"Twice? She came her lot for you, a raw bloody virgin? Twice?"

Kili nodded, vigorously.

"By this time I just felt like my cock was going to burst, and I rolled over on my back, and Hela rolled over with me and she…she did to me what I'd just done to her. Well, she kissed me, first. On the lips. I didn't know, I couldn't imagine that anything could ever feel that good!"

"You lucky bastard! You didn't even have to ask her?"

"No. Then, we were both lying there, on the blanket, and I was holding her, and we weren't saying anything, and then all the sudden I just blurted out to her about what she thought about the picture on page 69."

"That too?" Fili snorted.

"Right in the middle of that, you know, Hela, she…she came her lot, again, and we righted ourselves, but I hadn't. Well, not that time. And I told her how, well I said something to her I'm not going to tell you about, and then I told her that I wanted to make love to her."

"And she let you?"

"Let me? She was desperate to have me! As desperate as I was to take her! Mahal, Fili, she had her arms around me, and her legs and…and she just…she...well she didn't just lie there…and I…I can't explain it…I mean, I was…I was inside of her…and…I know you think I'm your crazy little brother, but I knew, I knew for sure, then, that I loved her. I don't ever want to feel that, for another woman. I won't even look at one. They say that a Dwarf man loves only once. I mean I know that…fooling around isn't love, but…but this is love, Fili. I love Hela. As long as I live, I will never love again."

"That's just my luck! I've spent ten years before the mast, looking for the whore of my dreams, and then she turns out to be your girl. Right under me fucking nose, there she is, the misty-eyed, come-drunk, cock-struck, lust-crazed Madonna of all Whores and…owww! What did you punch me for?"

"Hela is not a whore! Don't you talk about her like that!"

"Oh yes she is! I mean it as a complement, Kili! That Dwobbit is the fire-haired harlot of every man's dreams, the kind he wakes up from with a mess to clean up, and she's your girl, you lucky bastard! And all she's going to be thinking about, every time she sees you is…You've got to let me have at her!"

"What? No!"

"I'm not going to fall in love with Hela! But she's my friend, too and you don't know at it's like to be me, having the blood of the Great Beast pounding below me belt, every fookin' day! I'm your brother, Kili! You and I have shared everything we ever had in the world? I wouldn't begrudge her to you, if it was the other way around."

"You can't ask me that! You'd have to ask Hela!"

"Well, you just better hope our Uncle never notices her."

"Do you think he'd try to steal Hela from me?"

"Of course not! But he'd borrow her, quite often!"

"Well, that wouldn't be so bad. You know, he's not actually our father. Uncle and I could marry the same girl."

"Who?"

"Hela. I love her, I told you! When I'm of age, I'm going to marry her."

"Do you think you'll still be mad for her in fifty years?"

"The fire-haired harlot of every man's dreams? What do you think?"

"You may be right, little brother. Now, go to sleep. You look exhausted."

"That's only because I am."

"What if I wanted to marry her?"

"Fili, you're never going to marry anyone. Who would put up with you?"

"Marigold Brandybuck."

"You can't marry a Hobbit!"

"Marigold is not just a Hobbit. She's a Took."

"But a Hobbit can't be the Lady of New Belegost, or the Queen Under the Mountain."

"You tell Uncle Thorin that. You're not going to be standing alone with Hela on your wedding day. He'll be there. In a few years, he'll notice her, and you're going to have to make room for Uncle!"

"What about you?"

"Me? What about me?"

"I know you, Fili. You've got some scheme!"

"That's right. A woman married to a hard, unfeeling, miserable old bastard of a whoremaster like our beloved Uncle, and a dreamy, romantic, love-struck poet like you is going to need a good friend. An understanding lover, who expects nothing of her and asks nothing from her but her friendship."

"And her arse!"

"Why, Kili, what an ugly thing for you to say!"

"Don't paint me with that lavender brush, Fili! I'm just as good a man as you are! Better, even!"

"I didn't say you were queer. I said you were…"

"I know what you said! You said in a very nice way that I'm a quivering little pile of lovesick nancy, and that once the real men like you and Uncle Thorin take over, I'll have to stand in the corner with me cock in me hand and cry! Well if that's what you think, big brother, you've got another think coming!"

Kili got up, and started folding his blanket.

"I didn't say that, or mean it? Where are you going, it's pouring out there!"

"I won't be out there! I'm going to sneak in Hela's bedroom window. That's where I'll be! I'll show you who's a man!"

Fili went a whiter shade of pale.

"Kili, no! Fenrir's like a bear, himself! He can probably hear a gnat breathing ten miles away, and I'll bet he can smell a man in his house not married or promised to his daughter! He'll kill you! With his bare hands!"

"I'm not afraid!" Kili sniffed.

He put on his cloak and hood and went out into the rain.

Fili sat awake, trying to think of what he should do.

"Well, he's my little brother, I should go."

He put on his cloak and hood and went to open the barn door when it opened itself.

Fenrir had Kili by the scruff of the neck, like he was a disobedient puppy.

"I thought it would be as much, with my daughter, as I married the prettiest girl in the Shire and Buckland! You young pups howling outside my girl's window, barking and chasing your tails! Well a dog who's housebroken and knows his manners can sleep in the house, but the place for you unruly cubs is in the barn! You keep your litter-mate here with you, Fili, son of Vargbrand, because next time I catch him yelping around my windows at night, I won't think it's so funny. I'll go to the spare room, and wake your Uncle the wolf, and he'll come out here with his belt in his hands and not around his breeches and give you a hiding that'll make you poor cubs howl and cry all night!"

Fili thought up a quick lie to explain themselves.

"Well, it's just that, Uz-Fenrir sir, it's cold and damp out here, on a night like this. Right, Kili?"

"I was only going to find out if we could come and sleep on our pallets, in front of your hearth, Uz-Fenrir, sir." Kili agreed

Fenrir put Kili down.

"Oh, so that's your story, is it? Well, I suppose it's not very nice out here, in the rain, when that September chill comes into the air. Maybe you ought to come and sleep by the hot embers of the hearth. Get your things, cubs, I wouldn't want you to catch cold."

It was nasty in the barn, and much nicer by the hearth.

Especially after Mrs. Took came out in her dressing-gown with two feather-beds and unrolled them on the floor, for the boys to unroll their pallets on.

"You can't put these poor lads out in the barn on a night like this! They'll catch their deaths, with this chill in air, and fall almost upon us."

"What about Hela, witch?"

"What about her, you crazy old bear? She's in her room, with the door closed, and we'll be in ours with the door open, and the lads are out here by the fire. And it's going to stay that way, isn't it, boys?"

Fili and Kili had learned in the past year that the Tookish schoolmistress' draconian punishments were far worse than her husbands' outbreaks of anger.

She was even more strict than their Mum and Uncle Thorin, and like her students, Fili and Kili had learned to love and fear Madame Took in equal amounts.

They both just nodded, vigorously.

The door to their bedroom remained open, and Fili and Kili were sure that the bear and the witch were sleeping with one eye open.

"You saved me, Fili."

"You're welcome."

"But what if Bella gets bold and comes out here?"

"Hold the covers up to your neck and scream for help. Fenrir will come and put her back to bed."

They both laughed at that, and went to sleep.

* * *

Five years, twice many visits, and a just as many chance meetings went by very quickly for the grown Dwarves, but it seemed like an age to Fili, Kili, and Bella.

Fili and Kili were by now trusted, when their Uncle was not also visiting, to sleep in the spare room.

As of yet. Kili found himself alone in Hela's affections, and they got to be clever as thieves about finding places and times to be alone.

With Fili as their conspirator, standing lookout and inventing the wildest of excuse which he could, somehow, convince Fenrir, Dwalin and Thorin had merit.

But Hela was twenty, now and Fenrir had on his mind a promise Thorin had made to him, at their reuinion in Bree.

It was summer, again, when Thorin visited with his nephews, and Fenrir began to make noise to his King about Hela's apprenticeship.

Fenrir was a blacksmith, and he wasn't going to pass up his chance to apprentice his only child to the finest Master Blacksmith in Middle Earth.

"You know, Thorin, Hela is 20, this year."

"Too young for marriage, by any people's standards, even those of Men. When she has reached thirty and three, her majority by her mother's people, she and Kili can be braided. But he can't marry until he's 100, and he's got a ways to go yet."

"I wasn't thinking on marriage. Before a Dwarf thinks on marriage, they have to learn a trade, if they will join a guild. Man or woman. Apprenticeship is ten years. So, if she's to be married, or at the very least, braided, at thirty-three, about time for her to begin her apprenticeship."

"Don't you think she's a little young, yet?"

"Not by the lights of the old witch's folk. Like you said, she comes of age at 33, not 75. Or 100. And Hela's nearly the same age as you were when Smaug came. You were what, 24 or 25? And I was 20, then. You know, Thorin, Hela is all her Mum, and I have in the world. I'm getting to be a very old man, and the old witch, Oleander, she's not getting any younger, either. I'll have no more children. And I am beginning to think the old witch was right, and I didn't do me daughter any favors, raising her out in the middle of nowhere, wild as a Rhosgobel rabbit."

Thorin laughed into his glass.

"Your daughter is wild as a Wilderland wolf, not a Rhosgobel rabbit! She even has one of them convinced she is of his kind!"

"Now, Thorin, Hela is not the first woodsman to tame a wolf cub rather than spend a lot of money we don't have on a hound."

"But she's the first I've seen to nurse a wolf cub in her arms, with a bottle, and raise him from the time he was a little thing without even his eyes open. And she speaks to Tyr in yips and howls and barks as much as in words. Your Hela is a wild thing, Fenrir, of this wild wood you have raised her on the outskirts of, and even the cub knew it!"

Fenrir snorted, and waved his hand dismissively.

"Tyr is a fine animal. Bigger and smarter than any dog, but just as loyal and true. He runs to you with his tail wagging, and you let him put his paws on your shoulders and grab him by the ruff, as we all do! And we have had a lot better luck with game, and so has your huntsman nephew, in the past two years, since Tyr has hunted with us. What does my daughter's hound have to do with her apprenticeship? You have Dwarrow wolfhounds in your Halls, I'll be bound, and they are part wolf, themselves!"

"Much, Fenrir. You are named for Loki's wolf, and your cub is named for his daughter. The Trickster God has even marked Hela as his own, and you before him. And your brothers, and your father, and your grandfather, back to the time of Durin, when Loki is said to have founded your family with Freda the Fair, back in the days when he came among our people, to commission the hammer of Great Thor. Some don't belive that, but knowing you and your father and your brothers? I believe. Because you, Fenrir, you might as well be the Wolf's son, and your cub Loki's daughter. You don't know how to tame her, for you are a wild man, yourself, and she pays you more heed than her mother. So, you want to leave it up to me, to stretch a thin veneer of civilisation over your pup!"

"Well, that may well all be true, Thorin. In fact, it is. I'll give you that. But as much as she seems bound to, I don't want Hela to grow up to be just like me, do I? That's why I married a civilized, educated witch, from a fine family. And Hela, she has a lot of education an' manners, an' quality, like her Mum. She just dinna show it! After all, I have my reasons for not being able to live decently, with folk. Hela just doesn't know how. Mind you, she's a very bright girl. Speaks and reads three languages, and she's already a better smith now that a lot of Dwarrows are when they've finished with their apprenticeship."

"That's quite a claim for you to make on a girl of twenty."

"It's true, though. She's got a knack for it, Thorin, I tell you my girl has fire and molten metal in her veins, and not blood! I've already taught her all I know of smithing, and I only let her pick up a hammer starting when she was 15! She learns fast, and she's a hard worker. My girl had to be a hard worker, she's had do men's work, as hard as a son would have, living out in the middle of nowhere with me, in all seasons and all weathers, with Oleander not being able to do any heavy work. I'll admit thought that Hela's quick to anger and she's got a smart mouth and she'll give you nothing but lip for the next ten years. But my Hela's bright, honest, and loyal to a fault. And strong. By Mahal's brass bollocks, she's almost as strong as me, and you know I am as strong as ten Dwarrows. Well, Hela is as strong as five. And she is not yet grown! Once you've showed her that you are with her, she'll walk barefoot through broken glass to stand by your side when every other fookin' hypocrite on Mahal's Green Middle Earth has show their back to you. We'd like to have her back at home, in the summer, for at least half of it. And for Yuletide and the autumn holidays. But consider this, Thorin. My brothers and I were your father's and your grandfather's and your guards. I gave the Hers of Durin my family, me youth, the best part of me life, even me fookin' sanity. Ye can't say no to me!"

"And I would not, Fenrir, and just because you and I have always been friends, and comrades and not for the rest of it. But you're not thinking about what my nephews? Do you think I can watch them, or your red-haired daughter, every minute? There's far more places where eyes won't be on them, in New Belegost. You remember the way you were at that age. You know what'll happen."

"Yes. And I don't like to think of it. But, your Kili already wants to marry her, and Hela hasn't said she will not agree. He's a good lad, and in five years he has not wavered in his devotion to her. He even showed me how he has her name, tattooed in runes on the back of his neck, to show he has vowed himself to none but her. I know she will already have one husband in Kili. Maybe in Fili she'll find another. My mother, she was married to my father and my uncle. And there was no trouble amongst any of us, all four of my brothers! We were a fine family."

Fenrir began to look melancholy.

In the Battle of Azanulbizar, he had lost his father, his uncle, and all of his brothers, and his mother had died of grief, shortly after.

"You still are a fine family. And now you have a fine family of your own, Fenrir. Though I would not wish it on Hela to be married to my heir. Fili is about as suited for marriage as I am. But they are all too young for marriage, or for bairns, and what else would be the result? They're only boys. They've likely got no self-control, they'd take no precautions."

"My Hela is a fine specimen of a Tookish witch, like my Oleander. When I was first married, I knew I did not have the mind or the patience for bairns. There's a tea that Oleander drank, every morning for most of our marriage. It worked. Hela knows her secrets. Including how to make the special tea. And she knows where to find the ingredients for it. That is women's knowledge and I know little of it, other than Oleander tells me the plants grow wild all over Middle Earth, they are plentiful and not hard to find. But, even if there is no child, Thorin, the man who breaks it? He has made himself a wife."

"You know, you exacted that promise from me to apprentice your daughter when I was drunk."

"I always get you to make promises when you are drunk, you greedy, selfish son of an orc! When else would you promise anything?' Fenrir asked.

Thorin and Fenrir both laughed.

"All right. I'll give her a year, Fenrir. If the girl shows promise in that time I'll make it a full apprenticeship. If not, I'm sending her home."

"You won't regret it, me old friend. Come to the smithy, Hela's working. You can see for yourself I'm not just trying to get my daughter married off!"

As Thorin Oakenshield approached the smithy on Fenrir's homestead, he the familiar ring of a hammer against hot metal, and the sound of a woman's voice, albeit in a deep, clear, almost masculine contralto, singing a song unfamiliar to him.

_Blood and thunder tear asunder_

_Dwarrows' lot in life's to wander_

_Mahal when is wandering done?_

_Wandering's done when kingdom comes_

_Wandering's done when kingdom comes_

* * *

_Elves laugh and play in moonlit glen_

_But work's the way for Dwarrows and Men_

_Mahal when is our work done?_

_Work is done when kingdom comes_

_Work is done when kingdom comes_

* * *

_War and death and pain and strife_

_Struggle is the way of life_

_Mahal when's my struggle done?_

_Struggle's done when kingdom comes_

_Struggles' done when kingdom comes_

* * *

_Feast and drink when comes the Yule_

_Laugh and love, be merry, fool_

_For life is hard and life is cruel_

_Take pleasure where you can, my friend_

_Mahal when do the hard times end?_

_Hard times are done when kingdom comes_

_Hard times are done when kingdom comes_

Thorin walked into the smithy, and standing before Fenrir's massive, fiery forge hot enough to sing the beard of Loki, himself, was Hela, still about a foot shorter than both Thorin and Fenrir, with a few wisps of long hair the color of flame hanging around her sooty face, wearing a blacksmith's apron and a kilt and boots, and nothing else, swinging a heavy hammer in time with the song she sang.

Sparks flew around her, and the heat and the flame leapt up all around her, too, as she worked.

It didn't seem to bother her at all.

She took a breath, held up her hammer, turned the red-hot piece of metal over and then banged the hammer down again, without breaking her own rhythm, or interrupting the song.

And, just as she finished singing, she got a pair of tongs and pulled her handwork, a curved blade, probably the head of a scythe, from the forge, and thrust it into one bucket, and then the water, with a hiss and a great burst of steam.

Hela put on a heavy glove, grabbed the blade, and, with a blood-curdling berserker yell, swung it as hard as she could against the stone housing of the forge.

The metal sparked against the stone.

Hela held the blade close to her face and examined it to see if it cracked or scratched.

"Good. Ten down, five to go."

Then she set it out to cool.

It seemed to Thorin he was seeing Hela for the first time, not as Fenrir's cub, or his nephew's wild young girl, but as a woman.

Somewhere in five years she had gone from being a girl to a woman, they way young girls do.

And what a woman she was!

But Hela was so busy, she didn't notice her father or Thorin, and they walked away from the forge, together.

"That is her song. She made it up, herself. She sings it to pace herself, as she works. All those swords you see, hanging on the wall? All five? Those are of her making. I was commissioned to do some work for the armoury of the Master of Breeland. I trust Hela's work to supply him with weapons of her make, as well as my own. Look on this sword, here! Would you think it had been forged by a girl of twenty?"

Thorin examined the sword that Fenrir had taken from the wall.

It was a very simple weapon, blade, hilt and pommel, without decoration or embellishment.

But the blade, itself was unblemished, and the smith had worked in a simple curve and taper.

The sword was well-balanced, and it cut well through the air.

"Strike it as hard as you can, on that rock. Go ahead."

Thorin was surprised that the blade did not even chip or blemish.

"That is all I can teach her. Hela needs a finer Master than I."

"She's quite a smith, Fenrir! My own nephew's work is not this good! In ten years time, my friend, maybe I will marry her, myself. It's about time, after all." Thorin marveled.

Fenrir laughed.

"I will not hold you to that, Thorin, but that would suit me best of all. I do not feel like Hela is the kind of woman who would be content with marriage to a boy. But still, I would agree to give Hela in marriage to you, or one of your lads. Or both, in spite of what you say about Fili. Hela! Come out here, my lassie, forget that business for those fookin' slope necked yokels in that one-horse village of men! Thorin Oakenshield has agreed to be your Master."

She was lacing her jerkin as she came out, and laughing.

She was actually laughing.

Thorin couldn't believe it.

"No man is my Master, Da. You are my father, and Thorin Oakenshield may be my king, and the master of his trade and soon to be the boss of me. But I'll take my own axe and cut my own head from my shoulders, rather than bow it in anything but respect. If you want to take me as your apprentice, Your Majesty, you should know that when I call you Master, I am only saying you are the master of your trade. Not of me."

Thorin waited for Fenrir to chastise his daughter, but he only beamed a great smile and laughed a booming laugh.

"You know that's the way I meant it, lassie."

"I didn't say what I said for your benefit, Da. I know you know. Well, Master Thorin, when do we leave?"

Thorin looked down his nose at her, imperiously.

"When I say we do, girl."

"Fair enough. But should I start packing up now, or can I wait a day or two."

"I'll be leaving in a day or two. If you need two days to make yourself ready, you can start now."

* * *

The first place where Thorin and his nephews were headed was Bree.

After Thorin did some work there, they would return to the Blue Mountains, where they would spend the winter.

On the first night of the journey away from the Hills of Evendim, it rained, horribly, and one of the wheels of Thorin's wagon broke in a hole in the road he did not see for the storm.

He told Fili and Kili to get another wheel, and went out to lift the wagon out of the rut.

Hela was at his side, promptly, helping him lift the wagon.

Fenrir was right, not only was she strong, for a woman, she was accustomed to doing men's work.

Hela began shouting for Fili and Kili to do their part.

"What the fook are you doing, lads? You sons of orcs' wargs, get your arses out her wi' that fookin' wheel, or by Thor the brother of my father Loki, I'll beat you like we're already married!" she bellowed.

Fili and Kili hurried up with the wheel.

"Don't be daft, give the wheel to the girl, and let her put it on, we'll hold up the wagon!" Thorin ordered them.

"I'll help Hela." Kili volunteered.

Thorin cursed them both, to work faster until the job was done, and shouted at Fili that he was letting his end down.

Back in the wagon, Thorin drove on and Fili, Kili and Hela huddled in the back, taking off their cloaks and getting under heavy fur blankets to keep warm.

"Oh, that's not a blanket, that's you, Tyr."

"Kili, take your sword, off , it's sticking into my back. Oh, sorry. That's your sword, over here." Hela joked.

"Maybe he was tossin' himself off and the wheel interrupted him. You're supposed to do that with girls, Kili. You know. Like I do."

"I'm not the one who sits in the back of this wagon and spends half the night polishing his own hammer!" Kili retorted.

"He's got a point, Fili. I used to think you were just careless when I'd catch you at it, in the past. Then I realised that was your way of flirting with me."

"And you always look. The only thing is, now, your father's not watching, is he? And I doubt Uncle can even hear us. You can't hold onto your treasure, forever, Bella." Fili replied.

"What about me? You can't just have at it with me right here in the back of the wagon!" Kili protested.

"I'm sure Hela would make room for you, too, Kili. Durin's beard, me hands are freezin'. Where's a warm place for me to put 'em...see, Kili, Hela's a very obliging girl." Fili joked.

The wagon started rocking back and forth.

And not for the reasons Fili would have wanted.

"Owww! Quit punching me, Hela, that really hurts! Kili help, get her off me!"

"You asked for it, Fili! Hold him still and let me hit him!"

"Hit him again, Kili!"

The hound started barking.

"Let go of my shirt, Tyr, I'm not really hurting Fili!" Kili exclaimed.

"Yes he is! Bite him!"

"Oi! You lot stop that, right now! If I have to pull his wagon over, I'll box your ears! All three of you! Go to fookin' sleep!" Thorin shouted.

After that, things quieted down.

* * *

The next night, she did their cooking, and in the morning Hela and their muddy clothes were missing, and Thorin found her at a nearby stream, naked, having a bath and washing all their clothes.

Fili and Kili were also bathing in the water, and thinking of how long it might be before he had a chance to wash, Thorin laid his clean clothes on a rock, and decided to have a bath.

He strode through the shallows, over to Hela.

"Give me my clothes, girl, you are my apprentice, not my servant. I am a grown man, I can do my own washing."

Hela turned to him, probably to make a smart remark, and when she got a look at him, she dropped her washing.

She got such a comical look on her face, looking him up and down and then back in his eyes again that Thorin almost laughed.

It was clear she had never seen a naked man before, only boys, and clearer yet that she was impressed by what she saw.

But Thorin said nothing, and acted like he had not noticed.

He picked up his clothes and the soap, and handed it back to her.

"Do you not need the soap, Master Thorin?" she finally found wit to say.

"I have my own, thank you. Fili! Wash yourself and dry off and put on your clothes, don't stand there and stare at the girl! She's no more your plaything than she is my servant! Show some respect! Both of you, a little further down the bank, give the girl some privacy!" Thorin barked.

* * *

On the third day of their journey to Bree, as they camped, at night, Fili continued his shenanigans.

"Hela, do you wear anything under that Berserker's kilt? I know the men of your order don't."

"How do you know that, Fili? Do you fancy men, as well?" Hela retorted.

"I was just asking."

"Well, Fili, lad, if you're a brave son of an orc, you can try to find out!"

Fili put his hand on her knee, and with a wide grin, she knocked him over on his back.

"Come on, get up! You want to fight, don't you?"

"Not for real! My eye's still blacked from yesterday!"

"No, not for real. Like we always do."

"You won't beat me at wrestling, anymore, Hela. I'm almost a foot taller than you are, now!"

"I'm an orc's cunny if I can't! Two falls out of three, you son of a mountain troll, for you doing your own washing until we get back to your Uncle's halls."

"I won't do it! You're probably still mad about what I said, the other night, and now you want to black me other eye?"

"Are you scared, Fili? Of me? A little Hobbit lass? Haven't you got any balls under your tunic?"

"Not as big as the ones you've got under kilt , girl! You want me to make a fool of you, in front of your Master? I'll oblige you!"

Fili took it easy on her at his first try and Hela had him on the ground again in under a minute.

The second time he wrestled her the way he would have with his brother, and it took her about five minutes, but she had him pinned on the ground, again.

"How do you do that?" Fili insisted.

"It's easy, Fili. You can't help but try to get your hands all over me when we're wrestling, so I always get the better of you. Besides, you're a piss poor wrestler. And you always have been. Kili lets you win, because he's your brother. I hope for the sakes of all the women you have stashed in every town between here and the Blue Mountains that you fook better than you fight." Hela laughed.

"That's just it, Hela. I don't fight women. When it comes to girls, I'm a lover, not a fighter. But you've been on top of me long enough that you know that, don't you?"

"Is that what that is? I thought you had a pencil in your pocket."

"A pencil! Oh, now I'll quit playing fair, and tickle you half to death!"

Thorin decided he'd had enough.

"That'll be all, lad! Hela, get off the boy, or you'll have what he's got in his pocket, alright! Get yourself to the wagon, girl, and go to sleep. Not you, Fili. Or you, Kili, my lad. Let Hela have the wagon, we're all sleeping on the ground tonight." Thorin told her.

After Hela had gone, Thorin smacked Fili upside his head.

"Why'd you do that, Uncle?' Fili asked.

"What were you about, you damn fool boy? Were you going to just stick it in her, right in front of your brother and me? Have you ever had a virgin?"

"No."

"Well, you can't just roll a girl unknown to man over and stick it in her her, it's got to be accomplished with some skill, lad! Or you'll spoil her for it. She won't want to marry you, then, will she? So you'll keep your hands off of her until I've laid the groundwork!"

"Oh. Now I see what's going on! I have to keep my hands out of the treasure chest because you want to plunder the loot! Well, I think there's enough treasure there for both of us, Uncle! Hell, for all three of us."

"Stop it! Both of you! How can you talk about Hela as if she's a whore you've rented for the night? Especially when you know well that I love her! And when you're not going on like that, Uncle, the way you two talk to Hela, and about her, you make it sound as though she's a mare you've bought that you're trying to break!"

"Not a mare. Kili. A mule. It's plain to see her father and mother have worked her like she was a mule all her life, and even if her Mum showed her how to act like a lady, it's more plain to see she's decided to act like a Berserker, instead. The girl's like a wild horse. Well, it's my job to tame her, without breaking her. I'm her Master, and I'm a grown man. You lads keep out of it."

* * *

On the fourth day it rained again, Thorin drove the wagon, and Kili came down with a terrible cold.

Hela became as concerned as if she was Kili's mother, and mixed up some Tookish remedy for him.

She wrapped him in blankets and made soup for hom when they camped, and sat all day with Kili in the back of the wagon, telling him stories from the Simarillion, and tales of the Aesir.

Thorin noticed that she sang the poems to Kili, in Sindarin, and the poems from the stories of the gods of Asgard in Old Khuzdul.

That evening, Thorin did the cooking, and Kili slept, and Hela rested.

"How did you come to know those tales, Hela, my girl, and in the Elves' language and ancient Khuzdul?" Thorin asked

"My mother taught me. She's a teacher and always put a high store on knowledge and education. It's like you say, I do know how to act, I just don't do it. Sometimes. I always had a lot of time with nothing to fill it up at home, so I did a lot of reading. Da said I was filling my head up with nothing, but he never understood. I want to know. I need to know. I wish there was time for me to read every book in the world."

"Well, you'll be glad to hear, then, that the Great Library of Belegost never fell into ruin, and that we of New Belegost have added to it, since. I have always put quite a store in knowledge, myself. A King cannot be ignorant and expect to rule well. But if you have learning and culture, Hela, you ought to show it, and not just stomp around like an illiterate miner. Would it surprise you to know that I play the harp, and that I have been, since I was your age?"

"It would."

"That's because a King must have some culture to him, as well as toughness. And if you are going to be a King's apprentice, and someday even, a Prince's wife, you'll be expected to have a little culture and polish as well. And not to threaten to break someone's head if he accuses you of looking or acting like a girl. "

"I play the pan pipes, and the flute, and the lute. My mother tried to get me to learn the harpsichord, she said it was more refined, but I was never any good at it."

"Do you, girl? Well, have you brought your musical instruments along with you?"

"Yes, but-"

"Well, go and get your flute and the lute. I can play a little on the lute, too. Let's have some music on this journey, before we all die of boredom!"

Kili got his fiddle, too, and of all the nights of their journey, this was the best one; singing songs and telling tales around the fire.

Still, Hela was quite a puzzle.

She had as much learning and culture as some ancient crone of a mystic 300 years old who had never left his tower, but she was as wild and as clumsy as an unbroken young mare.

Thorin began to realize the enormity of the task that Fenrir had laid before him.

Not to mention that it was plain to see the girl's blood was as firey as her hair, and she made his two young stallions skittish in her heat.

Kili was shy with girls, he had a romantic soul, and he was prone to conducting elaborate affairs with silly girls who always disappointed him.

But, a man does not take a vow that he will have no other, and then have a girl's name tattooed on his body if he is not serious.

And Fili, on the other hand, he was serious in another way.

Sniffing around Fenrir's wolf cub, he caught the same wild scent that Thorin had, only Fili was a romantic in a different way.

He seemed to think that somewhere in the world there existed a woman who was the Madonna of the Whores, a girl who was as much of a lusty, hungry, libertine as he was.

Fili was fairly sure he'd found her in his dear friend Hela.

Thorin wasn't so sure his nephew was wrong.

And there weren't many women Fili set his cap for that didn't give in to his charms; just like his father, there was something about him that seemed to bring out the harlot in even the most virtuous girl.

And Thorin couldn't watch them every minute.

No, if he was going to stake his claim to the girl he would have to do it, and soon, then lay the cement in the bond over the winter.

Then instead of waiting for the end of spring, or even the start of summer to go on his travels, he would go sooner, with Hela, and leave the lads to their lazy indolence for awhile.

If he had a year's time with her, then she and the lads could have whatever youthful sport with her that she and they wanted, it would make no difference,

Because she would already belong to Thorin Oakenshield.

He had made up his mind to have the girl for his own; and for good or ill, when Thorin made up his mind, that was the end of it.


End file.
